Unsung heroes 1 - Lazeebow

Happy Friday folks! Today I am starting a small collection of posts about my 'unsung heroes'. My monk is obviously my main toon and I love her dearly, however I also raid on a few other toons, some of which have contributed to guild boss kills, and I felt like giving them some love and credit, as you know I am somewhat of an alt-aholic, and seeing as my monk takes the limelight on the blog I thought it was time to properly introduce you to some of my other babies...I mean toons...ahem. 

So, for this post, ditch your brew, grab your guns, crossbows and your favorite companions, and meet Lazeebow....

It starts....

Lazeebow is my hunter, he's a loveable cuddly Pandaren with a flair for outrageous outfits, a passion for food, alchemy and is also a skilled engineer. Incidently Lazeebow has gone through some rather drastic changes since I rolled him. He was actually born a female goblin called Snoopscout, I rolled this class/race combo to help out my old guild with the stay classy goblin achievement. For all intents and purposes, she was never meant to go past 85, however, spurred on by the prospect of cooler pets being available at 90, I maxed her out, collected a few pets, then left her while I started to level other toons. After a while she went through a race change and became a female orc called Mogdurz - named after the female orc that works in the Gloombound Mine in Skyrim. However I still never played her, and one day while boredom was getting the better of me, I wondered what could possibly want to make me actually play my hunter. Being particularly fond of the male Pandaren I race changed yet again and renamed him Lazeebow, the name was just something that popped into my head at the time while i was thinking about his lore (I like to have a little story behind all my toons). 


Lore.

Lazeebow was born and raised near HalfHill, his parents were tragically killed by a rampaging mushan when he was young, so he was taken in by the Tillers, who raised him, and put him to work. He was content like this for many years, he worked hard on the farm, helped out at the market, gave people rides to nearby farms, and was a generally well known and loved figure. His pet tiger Cringer was never far away from him, although she was really his only friend. Although he was known by many, he never really had any special person to call his own, and often felt like something of an outcast, it never really bothered him too much, but he always wondered if there was something more out there for him than being a farmer. 
     As a rather portly chap, he was very fond of his food, he met other hunters that stopped by the market, all of them slim, agile creatures, with grace and poise. Even as a very skilled hunter himself, he had about as much grace as mushan, and slim was not a word he ever wanted to associate with himself. Some of them ridiculed him for his size, however he took it all in good humour, in fact, he never got flustered about anything, true to his name, he was one of the laziest Pandaren you would ever come across, although he loved to help people, his favourite activities involved sleeping and sitting in quiet contemplation as the world went about its business. He had adopted this mantra from a wise old brewer by the name of Chen Stormstout, whom he first met as a small cub himself. He had attempted to lasso one of the giant cranes that roamed the skies just outside halfhill, which of course had gone wrong and ended up with him running for his life, even after the giant bird had given up the chase, he kept running, and eventually bumped into Chen, who gave a huge belly laugh and looked down at him and spoke the words that would stick with him forever...
    "Slow down...life is to be savoured".
   After many years Lazee was helping out at the market one day when an orc in some incredibly flashy armor approached the stall he was selling bread from. As usual Lazee chatted away, introducing himself and talking about how wonderful Halfhill was, and offering the orc a taste of the fresh bread. However it wasn't long before he had to ask about the orc's armor, it was red and black, and had spikey shoulders that looked very fearsome, he was wielding two huge swords, with red and black hilts and some glimmering red runes engraved on the blades. It was all very impressive. The orc informed him that he was a mighty warrior, and he was gathering up supplies to visit orgrimmar and compete in the Brawlers Guild. Lazeebow had never heard of such a thing, so he probed the orc with more questions, and discovered that it was a tournament, where entrants had to vanquish many foes, in order to claim the honor and prestige of being the best. What interested him most however was the prize, a mushan beast that he could ride around on. He told the orc that he might just enter himself, at which point the orc threw back his head an laughed, 
"A farmer? In the Brawlers Guild? Are you crazy?!?! You'll get eaten alive by the first round opponent! Have you never heard of Bruce?"
Lazeebow cocked his head to one side and eyed the Warrior up and down.
"If you can do it, why shouldn't I?" He asked quizzically. The orc chuckled, 
"The names Darkguyver, look me up when you get there....if you even make it there" With a sly wink he turned and wandered off. 
Lazeebow knew it was his appearance that was deceptive, dressed in raggedy old clothes and sporting his tillers tarbard with his wooden bow he knew he didn't look like much else than a harmless farmer. Maybe a new outfit would change that....?

    Lazeebow packed up his things and left HalfHill in search of something more, he got himself a shining new set of armor, which he would later become known for wearing. As ostentatious as it was on anyone else, on a huge Pandaren it just looked incredible, he went to the Brawlers Guild, and there, after some quite heavy rivalry with Darkguyver, they both managed to fight their way to the top and earn their prizes. It wasn't until they discovered arena matches that the pair really bonded, and became firm friends. They spent their time competing against other pairs in their bid to become champions, they traveled Azeroth looking for more interesting armor and tougher foes to vanquish.

Being a hunter doesn't always mean you get the crap jobs....

That's actually a lie, being a mobile dps that has only one castable ability that can be cast on the move anyway means you get ALL the crap jobs, but are they actually crap? Most of the time, doing these jobs enables your raid to kill bosses, and in the case of the one I am going to focus on shortly, means you actually get away with not having to deal with a lot of horrible boss abilities. I've used Lazeebow to help our guild get their first heroic Thok kill and more recently, Siegecrafter. I play Beast Mastery as my main spec, with Marksman as my OS but I only use this for PvP. It's not that i don't like survival, it just doesn't play as well for me personally as BM does. I understand that this may end up being to my detriment where I know that survival is better for some fights that BM is, and if it came down to the difference between a kill and a wipe I would switch.Even though Lazee hasn't even broken 570 Ilvl yet, he can still keep up with dps just fine, as I have spent a lot of time playing PvP on him, I have noticed my reactions are quicker and I can take preventative action for incoming issues without having to think about it too hard, thus making me a more capable player, even though my main role is a tank.


Belt Duty - spending hours on a giant treadmill and losing NO weight.

As myself and the other hunter in our group can obviously just go round and round on belts each time, we spend the entire fight not having to deal with any sawblades, lasers, bombs or magnets. To be honest, once you get comfortable with the matter purification beam rotation and work out your cds, the belts are a doddle. This is a short desctiption of how we managed our cds so that we could ensure we did the 10m damage to each item on the belts. 

Note: If you have even a flex AoC as i do, and it is fully upgraded, you will have Bestial Wrath available for each belt. Very importantly, if you do not have at least this trinket on flex fully upgraded you will not have a short enough cooldown on disengage to get onto the belts on time!!
Belt 1:
This belt is the easiest, both of us pre pot, get bloodlust, and use nothing more than Bestial Wrath, and kill command with Arcane shot, it is usually dead within around 5 seconds.
Belt 2:
For this belt I used Rapid Fire.
Belt 3: 
I use my stampede
Belt 4:
The other hunter uses his stampede, my Rapid fire is back up and it should die before it reaches the second set of beams.
Belt 5:
I use my gloves again, the other hunter uses his second pot, we both use BW
Belt 6: 
I use my second pot, other hunter uses his gloves and we both use BW
Belt 7: 
Anything and everything we have, my gloves are back up for this one and so is Rapid fire.
Belt 8:
As the other hunter has a heroic AoC he re uses stampede.
Belt 9:
My second stampede is up.
Belt 10: 
Finish off the boss!!

This is just the basic "big" cds that we used, obviously we both use glaive toss, kill command etc on cd. 
Talents & Glyphs: 
Posthaste and Glyph of Disengage are vital, or you will not make the distance to the belt!
Fervor is nice for extra focus though I found Thrill of the Hunt to be better for me personally. 
Spirit Bond - this is quite important, you have next to no healing on the belts (depending on where your raid team is tanking blackfuse), and for us the healers were all the way on the opposite side of the room, so having spirit bond to heal you while on the belt after you take a tick of overlaod is great.
Glyph of Deterrence - great for when you have to run through fire to reach the pipe
Glyph of Liberation - again, just a little help with healing, especially for when you are disengaging onto the belt, the ticks of overload are quite heavy and having those little touches just make it safer.
Pets:
I took a spirit pet, purely because it has a self heal. Pet can be somewhat buggy on the belts where you disengage up, so after many trials of different things, I settled on climbing the pipe, dismissing my pet, then re-summoning it as soon as I land, this way your pet stays with you and you get the maximum use from spirit bond.


Lazeebows Wardrobe and Companions.

 This is by far my favorite outfit, mostly because its bright and looks outrageous on a male Pandaren. It is the complete set from Ahn'Qiraj, including the bow. It's the set I currently use for PvE. The pet pictured with me is Mayhem (Originally Ban'tholos) my spirit owl, in my eyes he is one of the best looking hunter pets in the game. For PvE I always carry him, a sporebat for spell haste, a Hynena for attack speed, a wolf for crit and any other pet I desire, or anything the raid needs.



This is my current PvP set, its an old set of PvP gear which I bought for HP in the sewers in Dalaran, the bow drops from Illidan. Pets are quite variable for PvP, my go to pet is Mowgli because he gives me a crit buff, as this benefits myself and my partner who is a warrior. I like to have a carrion bird handy, as it reduces damage taken, a small raven or a gull for disarms, and a crab for stuns. Depending on the comp we are against, I will ususally use one of those pets listed.










So there you have it! Lazeebow in all his glory, complete with crazy clothes and fabulous pets. Next week I shall uncover another of my unsung heroes, until then....be good ;)

Talents for SoO - A closer look at which talents suit which bosses and why.

Hey guys, I was struggling to come up with a blog topic this week, and while raiding the other night I ran out of tomes of the clear mind and it suddenly hit me how often I talent change depending on the fight, so I though I would explain my thoughts on each talent, which fights I use them for, and let you in on some of my failed experiments when trying different ones out! (note: all from a Brewmaster PoV)


Level 15 talents.

Celerity - Having an extra roll can be really useful, especially on high movement fights, the added bonus of a cd reduction on these rolls means that if you spread them out properly, you can always have a roll ready, nothing worse than needing to move out of trouble and clicking the roll bind like a madman only to see its still got a 5 second cooldown. Some of the fights on heroic don't leave 5 seconds grace before you get slapped upside the head by something. I like to use this talent for Iron Juggernaut, as you need to take 3 bombs between tanking the boss, having the 3 rolls is pretty perfect here. I also like to use it on Spoils of Pandaria sometimes.

Tigers Lust - I love this talent, its pretty much my go to choice in this tier for most fights, its got a nice low cooldown, and provides not only a burst of speed, but frees you or anyone else you use it on from any slow effects, this is particularly useful for something like Garrosh, the adds he summons in phase one put a hamstring debuff on whichever tank they are attacking, and even if that's not you, you can put it on your co tank, meaning they can move out of the way of the iron star without being slowed. I use this for almost every fight in SoO, I personally value the short speed burst over the other two choices.

Momentum - I have not really found a place for this talent in Siege for myself, the extra distance on the roll is nice but compared to the other two options its just not as valuable to me, that being said, if you are add kiting on Garrosh, as long as you spread out the two rolls you have, you can make the most use out of the extra movement speed, combine this with keg toss and you can kite those adds for days, I think this talent would really shine if you're in a 25 man guild and on add duty in P3.


Level 30 Talents.


Chi Wave - Another "go to" talent for me, overall this does a lot of healing, and damage, plus it has a relatively low cooldown making it nice and spammable. It also uses the smart healing mechanic so it can be overall really helpful for your raid, especially your melee and co tank. I have used this talent for every single fight in the raid, and its always proved valuable.

Zen Sphere - Although I like the idea of this talent, running logs on it I have discovered that its overall healing and damage just don't stack up to Chi Wave, although its cd is shorter and you have have 2 orbs out at once, the amount it ticks for loses its value when you're being hit by bosses that have 300k+ melee attacks as standard. Thats not to say Chi Wave is any better in that situation, but it can provide on the spot "chunk" heals as opposed to a small ticking heal. I currently do not use this talent for any fights in SoO.

Chi Burst - I love this talent for aoe fights, it provides a huge burst of on the spot healing to anyone it travels through and contributes a very reasonable amount of damage to any adds. I favour it on fights like Galakras, sometimes spoils, though for progress I used Chi Wave as it requires less aiming and has no cast time so that I could focus more on add control and positioning, but once the fight was more committed to memory and I was more comfortable I switched to Chi Burst.

Level 45 Talents.

Power Strikes - As I do not generally have any issues generating chi I do not use this for any fight, that being said at lower gear levels it could be quite useful for ensuring you always have enough chi to keep BoK up and the ability to purify on demand.

Ascension - This is pretty much the only talent I use in this tree as it stands, I like having 5 chi available and as I do not run any extra haste and have reforged any haste i do have into mastery, the extra energy regen means I always have the 40 I need for my keg smash, coupled with the fact that I am very fond of RJW, I prefer the 15% regen to make sure I can use both as much as possible.

Chi Brew - Again I find this talent nice for lower gear levels and when I was struggling to generate chi, I still find it great for single target fights like Malkorok, where an instant chi generator can really come into its own, plus the extra stacks of EB are also great to keep a high uptime on it, especially when you run a lower crit build like I do.


Level 60 Talents.

Ring of Peace - This is a really nice talent when you have either a lot of adds to deal with or caster adds, the silence gives you a lot of breathing space and time to position yourself in front of the adds and stop them from stacking up behind you, I use this talent for Galakras, Spoils, Garrosh and sometimes General Nazgrim, depending on the raid comp at the time.

Charging Ox Wave - I really like this talent, however the only place I have really found it useful is Nazgrim, because in my humble opinion, the other two choices are better. Using it for Nazgrim adds means you can help lock down a mage that's casting while you're dealing with a Shaman, obviously this requires some careful aiming but once you get used to it, it can be great on this fight.

Leg Sweep - I used to use this on add fights, until I discovered that when you use it, it resets the swing on each add stunned, which will then all hit you together at once, which is fine if they dont hit very hard, but the adds on Phase One of the Garrosh fight hit for about 200k each, when there's 6 of them, and they hit you as one...it hurts! I have grown to favour RoP over this, once I started tanking bosses that hit harder, the reset swing can really knock you for six if you're not expecting it. One thing I will add, is that the animation for this is hilarious compared to the other two, and watching 6 adds fall over on their arses in unison is always great.


Level 75 Talents.

Healing Elixirs - I was never a huge fan of this talent to begin with, but after combining it with the Chi Brew I discovered that for constant damage fights it is quite nice to have that extra heal, also, any fights where you are likely to be away from healers for any length of time. I currently use this talent on the  Norushen fight on account of the constant ticking aoe damage. 

Dampen Harm - This for me is a really nice damage against the hard hitters like Malkorok, General Nazgrim, Thok, paragons and Garrosh, although for Garrosh I sometimes like to take Diffuse magic, again depending on raid comp. Combined with my already high mastery build, If I am going to have to wait for too long for a guard and have no other cds left, it can take the edge off what could be otherwise fatal melee swings. As it is not affected by attack power it is also a great tool to pop at the start of the fight until you have enough vengeance built up to get a decent sized guard, as cold tanking on a monk can sometimes be a little painful.

Diffuse Magic - I love this talent for fights like Immersius, it means that if something goes wrong you can completely negate an entire corrosive blast. I also liked to use it if I was tanking He softfoot, as if you get into an awkward position when he has noxious poison, you can give yourself 6 seconds grace to reposition, and not take any extra damage from the poison on the floor. I also use this talent for Sha of pride, Siegecrafter and Garrosh for the whirling corruption if we have no DK's with AMZ present.


Level 90 Talents.

Rushing Jade Wind - A particular favorite of mine, even before it was remodeled in 5.4. Especially on Add fights like Tortos. Since the remodel it has become my favorite talent for all 3 specs of the monk, I find it particularly great for extra damage and chi generation on Galakras, Spoils and Nazgrim where there is a constant flow of adds to ensure said chi generation. That's not to say that I haven't used it on fights with less adds such as Sha of pride, or Garrosh. When you need to get and keep aggro on adds that may not be there for long, if you already have high vengeance, this talent is perfect, plus is means you do not have to channel SCK and you can keep using your other abilities. I appreciate that you still dodge and parry when SCK is going, but as someone who has 8% parry and 20% dodge (without taking EB into account) this doesn't really comfort me a lot, and there have been more than just a few occasions where I have fallen over because of this channel.

Invoke Xuen, the White Tiger - one of the coolest looking talents by far, a giant blue electric kitty fighting for you gives a certain amount of street cred over other tanks in my opinion! Xuen also does amazing amounts of damage, and he cleaves, but if you're looking for burst on a single target boss, this is the guy to do it. I like to use him for Malkorok, Iron Juggernaut, Thok, Seigecrafter, and for progress, he was brilliant for Spoils, as if you find yourself overwhelmed, you can bust him out and have him take over some of the ads and tank them for you, while doing batshit crazy amounts of damage, thus helping them melt a little faster. 

Chi Torpedo - Ever since I flung myself off Lei Shen's platform when forgetting how far this thing goes in compared to a roll I have been a lot more cautious about using it. In all honesty, for Siege, it just doesn't stack up to the other two options in this tier for me. I don't use it for any fights, purely because it means I would have to forgo either my Kitty or my RJW. It's a shame really, because I believe it has its uses, and the animation is pretty awesome, but with the amount of healing and mobility Brewmasters already have, it just doesn't have any value for me.