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Guide

"A Guide to the Shado-Pan Geyser Gun" is an excellent guide for those who learn better from watching or listening.

Shado-Pan Geyser Gun is obtained from the raid  Throne of Thunder (Wing 2, a.k.a. Forgotten Depths).  You must reach 250 stacks of the debuff  Spray Water by jumping from one Waterspout to the next.  The circle of waterspouts are in the very first room, right where players are loaded into the raid instance.  The debuff has only a few seconds duration, so there is only a small amount of leeway for errors.

This guide assumes that you are doing this on LFR with all bosses & most trash mobs cleared, and that every other player in the LFR group has dropped from the group.  (The latter is very important, as it is already very easy to mess up without some jerk interfering with your attempts.)

After Ji-Kun is dead, pick up a Feather of Ji-Kun and activate its ability by clicking the special action button that appears.  Fly up into the air above Ji-Kun's platform, find a red circular portal, and use it.  You are now at Megaera's room.  Run to the back of the room.  There is a tall steam geyser shooting up toward the ceiling.  Right-click it, and it will launch you up and over the rock wall.  Now simply back-track to Tortos' room.  (Be careful to not aggro any remaining mobs, especially the ones that patrol!)

I must stress that a significant majority of players will not be successful on their first try, so try to remain calm and take breaks to stand up, stretch, etc.  If you are particularly susceptible to motion sickness, I recommend that you ingest an anti-motion sickness pill a few minutes prior to starting.  I found that hiding the user interface (default keyboard bind is Alt+Z) helped lessen the symptoms, too.  You don't particularly need the UI anyway because every so often a new spell visual (in addition to prior visuals) will appear on your character to help track your progress.

• 25 stacks = a bright water jet trailing on the left foot
• 50 = right foot
• 100 = left hand
• 150 = right hand
• 200? = pulsing effect every 2 - 3 seconds
• 250 = radiant watery sparkling from the main body

I also strongly recommend listening to music in the background.  You'll be spending a lot of time going around in circles and it is easy for the senses to dull from repetitiveness.  Music helped me stay focused by breaking up the monotony.  (I played 25 Warlocks VS Heart of Fear, for the curious.)

Do not bother trying to get a head start by using the two waterspouts that helped you get back up to the ring of waterspouts.  There is no advantage for doing so, as you will soon understand.

It took me a few tries to get a feel for the mechanic.  I quickly discovered that I controlled the direction my character was launched by the direction my character was physically facing - and that I needed to react quickly in case I was becoming off-course. (Note: If you have bound your 'S' key to something else, then you will need to re-bind "move backward" to that key.  It is imperative that you are able to move in any direction so trajectory corrections may be made before you are committed to them.)  The aiming must be done before you land.  Imagine a straight line from one waterspout to the next, and as you are in the air you turn your character so as to be parallel to that imaginary line.  If you need to make a planned correction while in the air, it is best to correct to the left, not the right.

I originally tried using a clockwise pattern but realized that I was making it hard on myself by not being able to clearly see one of the waterspouts.  I saw immediate improvement (i.e.: I stopped landing in the water and losing all my stacks) when I switched to counter-clockwise.  I stopped using the two outlier waterspouts because it simply positioned me wrong for going counter-clockwise.

This really is a case of practice, practice, practice.  In my case, nearly 90 minutes of practice followed by a successful attempt that clocked in at 13 minutes.

Oddball notes:

• Abilities that grant immunity will wipe the Spray Water debuff.
• Players who are seated on a multi-passenger mount, e.g.  Obsidian Nightwing, will also gain stacks of the debuff.  Potentially useful for helping a friend who's struggling with obtaining the toy.

About the item

Shado-Pan Geyser Gun is a bit weird, but nevertheless fun.  It is attached to a letter sent to you from Taoshi.

From: Taoshi
Subject: Geyser-Hopping

Hello Thunder-Delver!

The Shado-Pan have been watching your progress through Lei Shen's Throne of Thunder and were astounded by your ninja-like geyser-jumping abilities in the Forgotten Depths.

We are working on weaponizing geyser technology in an attempt to turn Lei Shen's thunderous powers against him. I've included a prototype modification of the  Shado-Pan Dragon Gun. It just seemed fair that you be the first to use it!

--Taoshi of the Shado-Pan

Apparently in Patch 5.4, Blizzard changed the item so that you must first have a weapon equipped in your main hand and unsheathed before you can activate the item.  The change may have been to reduce bugginess (I don't care, auto-spellchecker, I declare it to be a word) with character animation. With Patch 6.0.2, it appears that Blizzard has properly fixed whatever problem originally existed.  No more annoying error message nagging you to unsheathe your weapon!

A special action button appears on the screen.  Clicking it causes a short-range (about five to seven yards) stream of water to shoot out from the geyser gun your character is holding.  You do not need to have a target; all that matters is that the player or creature you want to soak is in front of you.

Various things you should know:

• Aura pacifies and silences your character.  Physical abilities shouldn't be affected but they'll cancel the aura if used.
• Mounting will not cancel the aura.  It does have some... interesting* interaction with mounts such as  Sandstone Drake.
• Logging out will cancel the aura.
• Works on NPCs, but not all.  For example, I couldn't soak the battleground NPC promoters.
• Works on all players BUT you must be flagged for PvP if the other player is PvP-flagged.
• Works on companion pets but not battle or vanity pets.
• Item CD may be reset by mailing the item to another character; will not auto-cancel the aura on the current character.
  Can no longer be sent through the mail, but no fear!  The cool-down is tracked for each individual character. (A slight nerf still, but I'm okay with it.)
• Emotes that have an animation may cancel the aura if used, but not always.  (I learned this when I used /giggle and /bow.)
• Moving does not interrupt the geyser stream.
• Two second CD on the special action button.
• Costumes may cause the animation to appear from, ahem, the wrong area.  Other animations when interacting with objects may cause an incorrect animation, too.
• Visual doesn't work well with off-hand frills ("Held in Off-Hand").

This part is too long for a bullet point, so it earns its own paragraph.

The way the geyser gun is held by pandaren male negatively affects the water stream visual. He isn't the only one affected, either: Blood elf females have a borked animation, too. Also, if blood elf female has it bad, don't even look at goblin female. The gun breaks(!) the spines of human female and undead female. Troll female has the same issues as panda male and human female but to a much lesser degree. Of race/sex combos I've tested so far, only tauren female looks great. (ಠ_ಠ)

Video of using the toy to spray someone:

 

 

* The sort of "interesting" that is great for subtly trolling other players while you AFK.  "How is that person doing that!"


(edited to fix missing line breaks. last true edit Nov 6, 2014 11:23 PM.)