On a new beginning

Last night there was unknown drama in ICC10. I had skipped it because of being 15 mins late, so they were already wiping when I logged on. Whatever happened, an old mate from Lords of Midnight gquitted, for not having a spot or something of the sort, and today, our raid organizer gquitted too, and moved to a larger guild, that has already cleared ICC10 and need people for ICC25 and an extra ICC10 group. Well... I got an invite too and didn't say no, since all I was reading in our gchat was about disbanding. Enough is enough, casuals don't go well with purposeful raiders.

Anyway, I'm now in the Reset Gaming Clan guild in EU Chromaggus.

And I think with this one, I'm gonna kill Arthas !

And again.. I'm the top achiever. I need some competiton or it's not fun ;-)



On the horde side, I'm simply loving Clarabela as a healing shaman. I'm 74 and I have healed everything up to Violet Hold with no wipes. Healing orbs, Hots, chain heal, totems, and MP5 ftw. I'm nearly full blue and rocking so much, I've used all my rest time and I'm 74.5 questing only in Borean Tundra and sometimes in the Fjords :)

Can't wait to try Cornelius as a druid healer LOL !

On Marrowgar and Winter Veil revisited

Marrowgar is down ! After a few tries, he came down to 27% and then in the next one he was down for good. I died once, silly mistake, stayed in the middle when he ended.

TIP: I found a way to dps him during the whirlwind: Immolate is only 15 secs so it terminates before the whirlwind is over. During that time I can conflagrate him twice and while moving he'll proc Backlash at least twice. Use it to increase your dmg. Just stay the hell away when he ends the phase as the aggro table wipe will pull him to you if you're near the middle and/or you have a running dot.

He had time to visit Lady Deathwish but she pwned us.

As to the good and the bad: The good is that it dropped FROST NEEDLE FOR ME ! +657 Spell power yay ! The bad part is that I spotted a dumb lock with an equivalent sword (crit instead of my hit) and it was the Quel'derrar. So... the stupid epic heroic dungeon chain quest delivers a sword that matches the 10-raid one. A bit sad, but then again, Blizzard is going for this alternate ways of gearing..

On Marrowgar

I got a spot to go and raid Marrowgar. It's a very easy fight for DPS, not so for healers and less so for tanks. Tanks require precise coordination in order to escape de 30K+ hit the boss does to them after a whilrwind.
We tried with no druids, and boy, HoTs are very useful.
As to strategy, pretty basic. DPS until u see bone spikes, then turn to them, dps them down. Run away from the blue fire on the ground. When the boss whilrwinds/WW, run away, dont dot (may be 1 dot if in the beginning of the WW) because he clears aggro after the WW. Wait for tanks to position the boss again, and resume execution.
Can't get any easier. Still.. 12 wipes later, healers and tanks couldnt handle it.

Meanwhile, I turned to my hordes. Leveling Clarabela as Resto (!!! YAY !!!), I'm 72 atm, went to Utgarde and healed both a 69 pala tank and a rly good 71 warrior tank.

Having fun at WoW again, that's what matters.

On a late TOC25 finally done

Wee, yesterday I got a spot for a TOC25 together with another guild. They carried massive firepower and know what to do so, basically, it was a smooth run.

My dps...was good but not so good. My PC showed me he's aging. 2400+ AMD Dual core and a 9500GT are not able to cope with latest 25-men raids, although Ulduar was ok. But fights like the Faction Champions and Twin Valkyrs with all the bubbles flying around... it's just bad 10-15 fps, probably. So... looks like Christmas is gonna give me a new PC.

I did die at the Faction Champions (crap crap) and we wiped once on Anub'Arak as ppl were slacking on the scarabs, but otherwise it worked just fine.

After TOC25, we went ULD25 to do the weekly raid quest, as we now have Frost Emblems to farm... (farm farm farm it's all this game is about anyway).

So... guildies are having the will to go for it, that's good.

On the negative side.. guess what, I lost AGAIN the Blade of Tarasque (3rd time? or 4th?) after rolling 90+. This time I rolled a 92 and a shadowpriest (the only other roller) rolled 92. So we rerolled and.... I lost.

I continue to love the WAR method of rewarding ppl. The more you contribute to the killing, the more chance you have to get the item. Otherwise a plain unlucky bastard like me will NEVER get the item, although he delivers good DPS.

Oh well...

On how to win in Icecrown Citadel (ICC5)

Ok, some tips on the 3 Citadel 5-men. I did it from memory, to help myself, so help yourselves:

Forge of Souls (FoS)

Bronjahm: : VERY EASY
- Deals shadow dmg.
- Use shadow ward (and ask for priest/pala shadow prot buff/aura) and shaman tremor.
- When someone gets "corrupted soul", a fragment is created that heals the boss. Kite the fragment and destroy it asap.
- At 30%, the boss goes to the middle and generates a swirling AoE. Stay in the middle as much as possible

Devourer of Souls : VERY EASY
- Deals shadow dmg.
- Use shadow ward (and ask for priest/pala shadow prot buff/aura)
- When he casts Mirrored Soul, stop dps, as your dps damages those debuffed with it.
- When he casts Unleash Souls, lots of unkillable mobs are created. Kite them and teleport to escape their hits.
- When he casts Wailing Souls, don't stand in front of him.

Pit of Saron (PoS) - ah the great outdoors

Forgemaster Garfrost: VERY EASY
- Tank+spank with a few twitches
- Deals frost dmg => Ask for palading frost aura.
- When he hurls a massive saronite boulder at you, move from spot.
- Every time he does his AoE thingies, go behind the saronite boulder to block LoS.
- Don't stay in front of him, he does some cone based dmg.

Krick and Ick: VERY EASY
- Hit Krick until Hick shows up. Then hit Hick.
- Use the "Big Bad Wolf" or "Leviathan" methods to stay as far away as possible from Ick and ready to run, when he starts "chasing you".
- Move away from poison clouds.
I did most of the fight with only 1 dps (me) and it was doable. Just becareful on the righ side, there's a corridor made of wood, you can go inside but Ick will hit you from outside, so you die. I did.


Scourgelord Tyrannus: SO EASY I BARELY REMEMBER IT
I know there was a wyrm, but we smashed it too fast, can't really remember details, and don't want to use Wiki for spoils, at least for now.
EDIT: Now I remember a bit. The wyrm drops icy patches that the tank has to go with Tyranus, otherwise he heals(?). Also, when he is empowered, the tank just has to stay on a patch and wait for the empowerment to be over. But casterwise.. it's tank+spank.
EDIT2: When the boss buffs Overlord's Brand on you, stop dps for the buff duration, as every damage you do to the boss is reflected to the tank.

Halls of Reflection (HoR)

- The hard parts of the dungeon are not the bosses but the waves and the quickness the gauntlet starts after a boss kill. So loot, eat, drink, fast.
- Always go for Priest --> Mage --> Hallucination --> Rifleman --> Melee. Kill them in this order and you got no problems. Stay away fom Hallucination. It explodes.
- If you've got plenty of food/mage, eat between waves. You have 2-5 secs if you're fast.
- In the LK gauntlet, keep walking, AoE kill the non-Elites first (let them all come as they take a bit of time to arrive after being thrown by the LK).
- Kill the abominations and Witch Doctors in this order (?). Use Shadow ward/prot.

Falric: EASY
- Tank+Spank.
- He fears => tremor totem and fear ward tank.
- Deals shadow dmg. Use shadow ward (and ask for priest/pala shadow prot buff/aura)
- He gets an increasing dmg reduction buff, so keep pounding him. Dot a lot for fears. I think Curse of Agony is better in the last stage then Curse of Elements. Affliction spec. will probably rock here.


Marwyn: VERY EASY
- Tank+Spank
- Deals shadow dmg. Use shadow ward (and ask for priest/pala shadow prot buff/aura)
- Move away from Corruption wells.

On the Ashen Verdict

Paused WoW for a few days. I'd pause until after Xmas, but 3.3.0 caught up with me.

Let's see if me and my guild are up to the task. I want to have some fun killing Arthas. And don't feel like doing much to move server etc.

On terminAION

One month has passed with me playing AION, and...it didn't feel great. It felt harder than WOW in solo PVE, although I remember WOW to be that hard in the beginning, before Blizzard decided to give us a hand and allow everyone to solo 2 or more mobs with nearly no HP loss.
My account terminated today, I leveled a 13 Asmo chanter and a Elyos 18 sorceror. The sorceror is immensely more fun to play, has a lot of crowd-control abilities and defenses.
I never reached the Abyss and its PVP, but from the look, feel and movement of toons, it won't be as polished as WoW, that's for sure.


Now, back to WoW. Searching for a new place. Last night there was a joint TOC25 run with another guild, I joined and waited, but was not invitated. Instead, some others that weren't even online got a reserve spot. Enough said, this behaviour has nothing to do with the Lords of Midnight and its spirit. It was bad already with the heroic mode problems, now it became unbearable.


Chromaggus is dead, so I'm able to go anywhere. If anyone knows of a mature raiding guild where experience, respect, skill and a desire for progress and achievements can make a difference, let me know.

I found a guild on Frostmane, with mature ppl, willing to raid 22-24h game time, which suits me fine. I also found out that the ppl I disliked in Frostmane's Portucale left to Burning Steppes, so Portucale would again be a possibility... I have no idea if they would accept me after 2 years. Probably not.

I also found a guild on Kor'gall, http://www.csguild.eu/ . It has exactly the same kind of goals I'm going for. Let's see.

LFGUILD !

On Pilgrimage and Ratatouilling

Well, H1N1 got me but didn't kill me. So, I got back to WoW to do the Pilgrim event achievements.

I was expecting something a little more elaborate. Instead I spent some time cooking, chasing turkeys (deja vu from Howling Fjord) and .. what else ? Oh yes, travelling around Azeroth to do the city dailies and get my butt into the enemy city tables. 2 days later and a few hours of gameplay later, the achievements are done and I don't feel like a Pilgrim at all.. sigh.


On to a sad moment... what do you do when you log on in the evening, greet the guild and no one of the ten logged replies ?

You /gquit, that's the right answer.

Well I didn't, but tbh, I think I will.



So then I logged on to LOTRO to check it out. It seems very nice. They upgraded the graphics speed and quality, and the cozy look of Bree did touch me. My level 12 Jadena hunter is still around, waiting.

At least I may have something fun to do, instead of running long done dailies and TOC10 with ppl that can't be bothered to say "hi".

On LOTRO giving a free week starting Nov 23

Title says it all. Codemasters informed me that on Nov 23 they will reactivate all LOTRO accounts giving them a free week.

My hunter Jadena has been hibernating for the last year or so, but may now I will subscribe it.

I've been playing AION, now with a lvl 11 cleric, and now I know why it felt like Asian: It's made in Korea. Some guy told me it was actually a game for Koreans, that they adapted for the Western side. The look&feel truly remarks Silkroad or others like it.

Good things:
- The overall graphic detail is better. Better trees, better grass, better buildings.
- The gear graphics is stunning, much much better than WoW.
- New areas to visit. I'm utterly bored with Northrend and Outland.
- There are a enhancements to the character profile, like power shards and self-enchanting.
- The chain talent usage is funny. It's like e.g. you can use conflagrate and Incinerate on the same key. After you press Conflagrate, it turns to Immolate. /castsequence or something similar.


Bad things:
- The movement is not as smooth as Warcraft, although the FPS are the same or better.
- The title thing seems ridiculous: I got a "Raider Hero" title at lvl 10 without raiding.
- The way to level is the same as Warcraft. All quests are "Kill 10 mobs" or "Get 5 drops from mobs" or "Deliver this item to person X" or "Talk to person Z". Utterly boring.
- Cities and populated places are slow, sluggish movement.
- The story is close to that of Warcraft. The good and the evil, the Light and the Dark. Two factions only, instead of a multitude of them.
- No PVP ? I watched some Altdorf duels and that was it.
- The Lore is totally unknown to me, comparing to Tolkien or Azeroth.

Hmmm, I heard about some AION private servers. May be I'll go check it out. It isn't worth to pay a subscription just to play 1-2 days a month, and only to go sightseeing.



Back to WoW.

I was pwned by a lock in AV with 30K HP, 3K SP, etc. My 1K resilience didnt mitigate dmg at all, he 1-2 shotted me. Then I went to check his gear and achievs and become demoralized, he had nearly 10K achievs and a full relentless set.

So... after that, I respecced from Affliction PVE to Destro PVP. Tried a few games. Well, much better. A lot of dmg, a good survivability... except against rogues, when they open on me.

Tried 2v2 skirmishes.. same thing, good against all except.. rogues.

I miss my felguard and Metamorph so much ;( pity it's not bursty enough for 2v2.

On a Mountain of Mounts

Oh yes ! Last night I got the achievement I had been seeking for months.
I now have 101 mounts, a mountain of them.
In the morning I got the turtle after about 1000 salmon catches (so that was inline with the 0.1% drop rate, thank you RNG)
My new blue hawk is beautiful, although I'd like it to be different from the horde ones that can be obtained from the Argent reputation.

Anyway, I'm the only one on my server with this mount, that I know of, and that's rare!



As to PVE progress, I was invited to a friend guild, they are running TOC 10 HC and need a lock, I also have a spot on the best guild of the server, they also need a lock, and are doing the Ulduar Heroic achievements.

Unfortunately, my back has been giving me a lot of trouble the last weeks, and I'm not able to sit for 4 hours straight 3 times per week.

That leaves me with solo tasks, and I've got two in my mind:

1 - Insane in the Membrane . It's doable, it's not less doable than 100 mounts. Also, I dont need anyone to help, no idiots around, I can do it myself. I need gold, that's for sure, and I just spent 16K. But I'll get it back (legally, so to speak ;)

2 - The Exalted. I miss 3 reputations to reach 40 . Unfortunately, if I select the 3 Steamweedle Cartel for that, I'm going to have double trouble if I later decide going for the Membrane, as I'll level them to exalted, back to hated, and back to exalted. Now THAT's insane. An alternative is trying to farm Karazhan for its reputation (stupid me, why didnt I do it in TBC). I can also try Shan'dralar and Ravenholdt. I also have Molten Core to finish, but by soloing 1-2 bosses a week, it'll take years. For AQ40 I also need to kill bosses... same for Hyjal or Black Temple.. that sucks. A slow but not time consuming alternative and a feasible one is doing dailies for the 2 Northrend reputations: Explorer's League and the Frostborn.


Why not go for both LOL, and at the same time level the 2 Northrend reputations.?
He he, lets go for it :)

Last but not least... AION. I'm gonna give it a last try, level it a bit more, but I'm enjoying DDO a lot, and LOTRO is stil waiting so.. that's a good alternative.
And JRRT is always JRRT, can't beat that!

On being smart and the frustration of rolls.. and BARON !

If there is one thing that WarHammer added to the joy of gaming versus the stupidity farming methods of WoW is the rewarding of rare items versus the activity one does, normalized with the role and with the gear. It is way better than rewarding based on RNG rolls.
Two examples of why I agree follow:

Last week I lost a Tarasque blade (for the 2nd time) with a roll 91 to a mage that rolled 99, but did much less dps with the same gear as me on a boss that requires no special mage handling (dispel,cc, etc).

And this week I lost Triumph gloves with a roll 90 to a lock that rolled 97 and did... less than half of my damage on Koralon Heroic, again, a boss where dps go flat out.




Is that rewarding ? No it isn't. One may argue, ok, but that's the only way lower geared ppl will get rewards. Well, fix it. Make it so that when someone rolls and looses, the next roll will be tuned for higher value and guarantees a 3rd drop. Whatever.


Ok, next topic, being smart. Guess what ? I found an AOE spot that gives (for DK or pala farming) up to 900K XP per hour. You've read it right, 900K XP in one hour ! Being a nice chap, I'm gonna tell you where it is. I was there at 70 with Net+Tari but it was a bit hard as there was no plate. Well, I now have Moonprince at 76, Shareth at 76, Morkin at 74, courtesy of Alterac Valley and... the Valgarde gate. Mobs give no loot, but reward imba XP, plus we get help from the guards and they respawn in seconds. Live and learn :P





Last topic... mins ago, I got myself the Deatcharger mount ! Baron Rivendare finally yielded, after 67 runs (probably 75+ but I didnt count the first ones).
1-(1-.01)^67=49%, so I was one of the lucky 49% that get the mount in the first 67 runs... not much luck, but not unlucky either. Thank you RNG.
And the grand total is now 97, 3 mounts to go !!

Four to Go and AION

Piece by piece, we're coming together. 96 mounts, 4 to go.

Yesterday I finally got my first ZG mount, the raptor.
The last days I've been farming both the sea turtle and the baron mount, but RNG decided to help me on this other front.
So sad I gave away 50 argent medallions, and didnt start dailies sooner, I could be owning the 101th mount already.
Anyway, it's a bit of a shame, because the dragonhawk is going to be 280% speed, whilst my violet proto-drake is 310%. Oh well...meanwhile, yesterday I went to help a guildie to get his legendary thunderfury, as he got 10 elementium ores very quickly, and so I got also 2 in BWL, and the head too !



Now that's a lore relevant thing, I've finally delivered Nefarian's head. Together with Hakkar's blood and Onyxia's head, I'm slowly finishing the remaining classic Warcraft quests ! And that also gave me an idea.... why not get Thunderfury myself ? Not that difficult, tbh. I can solo/dualbox Garr and Geddon weekly until the parts drop. Something to do after I get 40th exalted.

WoWwise, nothing else is new, the guild continues to stall, doing Ony/TOC10 and such banalities. No more 25-raids, no more heroic. Bah !



So, to a completely differnt thing. I'm tryin AION ! Got myself a level 10 cleric, with wings and all. The graphics look good, the rest... it's just like WoW, with an asian-martial-arts look and feel.. dunno if I'm gonna stay long. Comparing with LOTRO and it's Tolkien-ish environment, AION can't stand a chance. But i'll give it a month.

In Memoriam

António Sergio, o meu radialista preferido, passou para o outro lado.
Até sempre, obrigado pela 4AD e pela ZTT e por todas as musicas que me fizeram sonhar.

Lista rebelde, sempre , aqui www.pedrolucas.com

Cleaning up

Yesterday I did some cleaning on my long-term quest log, finally returning the Eye of Eternity - head of Malygos to the Wyrmrest Temple.

I also got lucky and looted the Onyxia head (again, LOL), and returned it to...

Guild drama ftw.. NOT

If there's something I've got little patience for, is when a guild starts to stress.
We had an imba healer, pushing us for Heroic modes. Unfortunately, many of the guildies are casual, casual enough to ignore TOC 10 HC request because of a daily HC...
Well, the healer is gone now, and as it's the 2nd time he leaves, he won't be back.
That means TOC 10 HC with leftover guild healers is out of the question, now, and probably forever.
TOC 25 is also a serious doubt, since in order to coordinate 25 ppl, a lot of effort is required, and I don't see enough motivation.
And then, part of the guild is pissed off for being left behind, another part is pissed off because of lack of motivation of others, others dont understand what's going on, others are bored, afk, or don't care. Officers and lesser fish alike.

We haven't finished Ulduar, and what remains as a guild is a weekly TOC10 normal and a few heroics, may be an Ony 10. Not fun. At all.

So..

1 - I start PVP Arenas with a fellow mage, for real, and stall PVE.
2 - I do as others, and start lvling alts to 80 (2 at 75, 2 at 72 atm)
3 - I quit guild and move to a pro guild. Disadvante ? Nearly daily raids with horny epics teenager freaks. Blarrgh.
4 - Do nothing and wait, while I continue to push for long run achievs like mount, 40 exalted, etc.
2 - I pause/quit WoW

Insomnia is insane for killing

Tonight I got a great achievement, after getting up with insomnia at 4AM. No battlegrounds running... oh wait, Warsong Gulch. Ok, joined. It starts... and wow, some imba combat. May be the chinese play at this hour, I have no idea.
What I know is that I started to shoot, hit, conflagrate, crit...and suddenly I had over 15 kills.

And then I went for the Wrecking Ball.



Damn flag carrier didnt do as I requested, ie, wait a bit for my 20, but still I outraced him and killed my last 3 while he carried it.

A great one. GZ me !

Always learning....

Just when I thought I knew it all, I learned a new trick. It's good to feel like a noob, at least there's still something to be discovered in this silly game.

The thing is, 99% of all destro warlocks will use imp, and during buff times, they will have their imp phased out, and set to auto-cast, since that's the default behaviour.

However, that will not allow raid buffs to buff the pet. It only occurs with Imp, since all other pets have no Phase Shift. Sure, we all know that. So...

Long story short, I now know how a warlock I saw some months ago had nearly the same gear, but was having his imp dps boosted. It was the bloody raid buffing ! MOTW, BOK, etc, does make a difference.

Oh well, living and learning.. having the humility to accept ones noobness is always good.

Btw, this was found while searching a way for my Imp to escape fire death in TOC 10 HC. I know some solutions now, like (1) telling it to stay near the melee (it will be cast-stomped but will get no fire debuff so it'll live on), (2) having it staying at the entrance and then moving to the farthest position to cast, (3) having it stay near a wall, far away from other players.

I also saw some tips about manual fire shielding specific players, like tanks. Makes sense. 63 added fire resistance is not bad for the 1st and 2nd bosses of the trio.


On a less positive note, my guild is on the verge of collapse, with some angry members not getting invited to TOC HC. Leader is not too much into this kind fof stuff so I wonder if it'll turn sour. Coincidence, I got an invitation to a forming guild from a PUG leader I met this week... from what I saw, there are some very good dps players joining, and I'll have a spot. Oh well,if all goes wrong, I wont be empty-handed.


93 mounts ! And counting... come on, give me a Baron Mount or a Turtle....or both :)

Simcraft or the agony of upgrading

OK, something is dead wrong here.

I've been using Rawr first, and then simcraft, to check on my upgrades.

Since I now have over 160 triumph emblems, it's due time for an upgrade from my T8/T8.5 4-set piece.

My current status is as follows:

Spell Power 2209
Spirit 549
Crit 412
Hit 374
Haste 535
Int 874

Simcraft say's I'm doing 4721 dps on a dummy. And it's true, I've tested and it's as it says. 100 dps +/-.

Now... the fun part is when I decide to change all my items to Tier 9 - Conquest.
Spell Power 2239
Spirit 560
Crit 464
Hit 366
Haste 517
Int 923

The upgrade in dps is .. very small. 4855 DPS.

T9 2pc bonus is better than T8 4pc bonus, but...it's not enough. So I tried to do smaller changes, only going for the T9 2-set, and keeping the T8 2-set bonus.

Theoretically, T9 Gloves+Head give me the best bonus, up to 4870 DPS, which is terrible, because I was hoping to go for the 245-head, but it looks like the T9-head will be better for my combo. I surely would like to try but... 45 emblems is a lot to waste.

So... what to do ? Keep my T8 set until I get a Crusader Trophy ? That'll take ages, givent the guild pace :( with ppl rolling for them, and with lucky guildies getting two while I'll never get a single one.

On this topic, guildies are freaking out for missing TOC HC tries. It's true, it's bad not to be invited at all, irrespective of wether we can go, or not, or if we have enough dps.

And talking about TOC HC tries, my pet messed up terribly. Imp gets the fire debuff after I get fire targetted, and dies miserably. So, two things to do: Switch to afflition for this fight, something I wanted to avoid to keep my dps high, or... may be set a fixed location for my pet to dps, far from the ppl. Yeah, think I'll try that. Set it far away from others, and let him dps the boss. Easy peasy

All Quiet on the Northrend Front

In the last days, nothing new happened, besides me continuing to farm a few mounts, and a silly mistake.
I finally got the Polar Bear rare drop (1%) from the Brunhildar village daily. It was my first ever rare mount drop, yay.
Needless to say, I continue to go for the Baron mount, ZG mounts, the turtle, and this week, the Headless Horse mount. Today I lost with a /roll 82 against a 84 :(((

Also, I imbued myself with a spirit of sacrifice to farm Argent medallions.

And the first thing I did was to fuck it up, by clicking on a tabard and buying it for 50 medallions ! It could not be bought back, and the fucking GM told me he can't do anything because the tabard is part of an achievement. FUCK IT, I had the achievement already, 3 months before (the Achiever)...

Oh well, 50 medallions down the drain. I need 620 or so... it's 62 days of daily farming for 1 hour... is it worth ? Sure, I'll get about 150g per day on that but still...

On a more positive note:

- I'm now past 90 mounts
- Today I got my first TOC10 achievement, defeating the Twins in less than 3 minutes.
- Two more days and I'll get a 245 head and two T9 items to replace my T8/T8.5, and will be able to deliver above 700 haste ! That's awesome !
- I started to twink my 29 rogue, buying a lot of heirlooms but .. found out that Blizzard fucked the twinks, by forcing ppl to go for no-xp exclusive battlegrounds, that are... empty. Oh well, guess I'll enjoy 29 until I ding.

Off-Blizzardwise, my LOTRO account is ready to be reactivated and I've been having a lot of fun with DDO.

TOC Heroic - going down !!!

Yesterday we rocked TOC normal in about 60 minutes, with I think, only one death and no wipes. After that, we decided to give it a try for TOC 10 HC mode.

We knew it was not going to be easy, and it wasn't. Our warrior tank died time and time again, during the Acidmaw phase. Later on, a druid tank came online, and the RL switched them. One or two more tries and down they all came.

We had 3 casters and 2 melee, and snobolds went for us all the time, which was bad, but still, it was never a problem to get to phase 2 in time. Sometimes the jormungars would get in with the 1st boss about to die, but healers could handle it.

What was way worse, and happened to me twice, and to healers too, is that while acidified and running towards the fire-d tank, ppl got knocked back by... no idea which of the bosses, it's something to check. So, after a knockback, we got stalled... and died. In the last attempt, we got it all, snobolds, 2nd bosses coming a bit too early, and I got fire debuffed, but luckily, I could stay apart and not harm the raid, as no acidifed ppl were there. After acidmaw came down, it was a breeze. The jormungar came down very fast, and Icehowl was very easy, although we now have no speed buff, so ppl have to be really fast.

In the end, my first heroic item, Icehowl Cinch.

My afflition DPS struggled again, as I simply forget about checking the 25% health to start soul draining. The difference to shadowbolt is mostly impressive, but if one forgets it like me...

With our strategy, melee get snobolds that arent killed until phase 1 ends, so their phase 2 dps will be worse due to stuns, so there's no comparison possible.

Still, not to bad, I had above 4K dps overall in the kill attempt, which was my goal in the first place.

I'll now have to check for an addon that shows the HP in value and percentage.. I remember SCT long ago had that.... and if possible, a better DoTimer that adds the lifetap timer. Forte has it but the graphics are sluggish and slow, DoTimer is much smoother.

Onyxia 25 and some DDO'ing

Last night we did a Onyxia25 with ~ 20 guildies, and guess what, it worked, after a few tries. And I managed to do some pretty nice dps with my afflition trial build and a fehunter, which died miserably in the end of phase 2, because of the flame breath, me thinks. I learned something which I had forgot,which is never dps too close to her on phase 3, as the fear may send you to her front and the frontal cleave will wipe you immediately.

Besides farming some emblems for T9, and may be completing Ulduar 10 and TOC25, I've got nothing else to do. Really. Unless I level the alts to 80 as full time, something I won't do. I prefer life beyond WoW.

And so I'm now investing a bit on DDO, and it's going great.
I'll now start playing with a friend, so we'll get some parties and have fun.
The community is very nice, we don't get the kind of cretin chats we see in Dalaran or /trade channels, with everyone talking about how good or bad someone is, or spamming, or... In DDO, you ask for something, you get answers, there's even an /advice channel with conversation ongoing all the time, so you can be playing and getting knowledge of the game at the same time. Wherever you go, people speak proper english, not the mumbling some kids use. Moreover, the game rules are based on the original DDO RPG (Core, may be with some 3.5 stuff), so you learn a lot of Dungeons&Dragons. You've got embedded multiclassing, so you can be a Warrior Priest, or a Rogue Caster, or whatever, depending of what enhancements and path you go for. You can exchange spells, and a panoply of things you simply don't have in WoW, and after watching DDO, I find the lack of complexity of WoW pityful. Seeing every raiding warlock specced destro, all with the same t8/t9 gear makes me LAUGH ! There's simply nothing like that in DDO. No one character is the same as another, there are too many combinations and complexity for it to happen.

Naechste halte will be LOTRO. It looks like the Mines of Moria are yet to show up in Europe, so it seems like a good time to jump in.



Oh I nearly forgot, we downed Mimiron ! And then went downwards to a wipe fest with the General. It's hard for casters !

WoW is getting boring again, MMORPG experimenting

This was accomplished on the 1st TOC25 boss, with no +125 flask, last night.
Talk about boring. With the 125-47=78 extra SP, I'd easily do over 5000 dps, which is always a nice thing, considering every one is single-dpsing, although of course, some ppl are afflicted by the snobolds or by the acid, so it decreases their dps. Pity Blizzard always disable the "load out-of-date addons", so I missed my AutoCombatLog to check how I can improve a bit more :(

We downed Jaraxxus easily, but we stalled on the 3rd boss. We're not CC'ing enough, ppl are AOEing (multi-shot), etc.

In the last days, I installed DDO online (now it's free!), DarkFall (it was a promising game, with no farming/leveling and no gear farming, which is the thing I mostly HATE about Warcraft!), LOTRO (I think I'm really REALLY going to level my hobbit Jadena, I wanna see the elves !!!). I still have to play a bit more of the Chronicles of Spellborn (now also free!) and of course, I will surely try Aion, while keeping an eye on WAR, now that I have a dual core to play.

Another achievement bites the dust

In the last days, I've been completing the achievements for TBC HC dungeons.
I skipped heroic dungeoning in TBC because we started 25-raiding in SSC and TK, so I geared Tarithel as much as possible without badges. And Netcownt was mostly solo and PVP stuff, so... I'm doing it now, Auchindon, Shadow Lab, Underbog, all passed.
Now for the hardest: Shattered Halls (normal was hard already), Steamvault (I think I tried once but the mobs were tough as hell) and Arcatraz.

Meanwhile, Lower city rep is half way through Exalted, running Auchindon HC daily.

In the meantime, I did Onyxia and FINALLY (YAY!!!) completed the Wintergrasp Ranger achievement for killing 10 dudes in every sub-zone. This one took months !

I'm missing triumph medals for T9, as I suddenly realized I can buy the whole set with them... oh well, I'm geared enough to do around 4k in conservative mode, and 6K in aggressive mode, and, as I'm no gear freak, and I'm not so sure about raiding for weeks doing the same things over and over to get a 10 dps upgrade.

AQ40 chain and what a long trip this has been

I finally completed the completable parts of the AQ40 chain, ie, asked a guild mate to kill the Twilight Corrupter in Duskwood for me. Then I went to talk with Remulus, the Moonglade tree guardian, and he went with me to fight Eranikus. I was able to dbox the corrupted dragon and his minions all around Nightaven. It must have been a pretty epic battle back in the 60 days, I think I saw it once, but couldnt quite get what it was back then. Now I know.
All that remains now is to farm Elementium ores. I did a BWL run, even extended the lock to kill the goblins for it, but no loot, and from the looks of it, respawned goblins don't drop it anymore, to avoid heavy farming (a bit stupid nowadays).
At 10K a piece in AH, I'll never get it, so might as well forget it, since the BWL mechanics don't allow me to solo it to the technicians.




As to achievements.... GZ ME, today I (could have been yesterday but I slacked miserably in ram racing) completed the Brewfest achievements and I'm now the proud owner of a 310% VIOLET PROTO DRAKE YEEEEEEEEEEH ! Boy it surely is fast, one does notice the difference. And the purple color totally matches the brewfest hat and lock class colors hahaha.

As to raiding... I've done a few more TOC25, we downed 1st (then I had to leave and later on guild downed 2nd). We tried TOC HC but tanks had too low HP and not enough dps so... no can do.

Onyxia 80 came alive on wednesday, I tried with a pug and then with a guildie run, but ppl kept messing around, being knocktail'ed to the whelp eggs, etc, etc.

What else is going on ? Ah, reputation wise, I went to HC Ramparts, dualboxed it more or less easily, and farmed Honor Hold to exalted.

Now I'm inside HC Auchenai Crypts and will do the same for Lower City.

I think I'll try Heroic Sethekk and Heroic Shadow Lab, just in case I can do it hehe.

As to luck.. my bad luck continues, had 3 brewfest mount drops, 2 at the same time, and another guildie got it. 1-(1-20%)^3 = chance I would get it. Obviously I didnt. I'm gonna keep trying daily.

Last but not least, out of things to do, I decided to fully do ZG on my own for Hakkar's heart. Got it so easily, Mandokir and Thekal are actually the hardest bosses, the others are crap... except for the optional ones. Those I tried once and utterly failed.

25-raids and the "many ppl" problem

What's the problem with 25-raids ?

As I mentioned sometime in the past, 10-raids are more difficult because everyone, and their death, is more important. That is true, but the opposite also applies. If you're good in your task, you also are more important than you are on 25-raid, as you need 2.5 good ppl to match your role. Which means that if you don't find 1.5 more effective ppl to do your task, your raid is screwed.

Still, it was fun to watch as we struggle to do a guilkd+guests run, but when we did a last try with guild-only members, it worked fine.

Well, not fine for me, fuck, because we lost a shadow priest after the guests left, I didnt notice until the boss entered the arena, and although it still talks for 10secs or so, you're already in combat, so no equip change. Long story short, my +3% hit went down the drain, so I missed a lot, specially conflagrates. 8% of those :( ... well, better play safe and always go for +hit gear.

After we downed the 1st trio, we tried the Demon Lord, but the best we did was 50%. Infernos are a problem, they don't spawn at the same time, and as I noticed, the volcanos like to spawn on our feet... on my feet, twice, to be exact. Supposedly we AOE them, but our offtank was never able to collect them and have them in one place, I think they tend to wander a lot. I don't want to think on what hard mode will look like. Insane.

As an addenda, our Vent chat was limited to 25, and we noticed 3 others in Arena chat, 2 of them not guildies, and so we told them to get out. It didnt go well, they pissed the officers off, so they were kicked/gkicked, then came into our vent to make noises, so we had to change the passwd, costing time, etc, etc.
In between, I was told that some dude I had invited to the guild, on request of a guildie, had already been gkicked months before. Luckily I had not invited the Vent offender, but anyway, ppl was pissed off because many RANDOMS are found in guild and some class leaders have been inviting them. So, request from GM: "NO MORE RANDOM INVITATIONS".

Lesson learned: I will never, EVER, invite ppl to the guild. There's a forum, let ppl make applcations, talk to guild leader, whatever.


On a different note, alting and AV leveling: Dear Lord: PVP leveling is so much faster. Every AV full win gives about 150K XP, that's about 1 hour of PVE. What's best, I can dualbox it. So I'm setting these 2 groups and have been dualboxing them.
DK72+Pala72
Rogue72+Warrior72
I'm loving to play retradin. It's soooo much easier now than back at lvl 60. There are 2 instant casts now that work like IWIN buttons: Divine Storm and Crusader Strike. Also seals are glued for 30 mins, no need to refresh them, only judge them. Bah. Too easy.

What I need to do is to train tanking now, but still undecided which char to go. Warrior, probably.

A-Noob-Arak

Yes ! It's easy when ppl know what to do.

Anub'Arak (why doesnt he stay dead) has died again, by the hands of our guild.

The cinematics are funny, when the Coliseum floor falls apart and we fall too, into a deep cavern, where Anub'Arak and his burrowers and scarabs wait. Distant memories of AQ40 came back to life.

The strategy can be resumed by:

1 - Shoot "Frost Sphere" down to create lots of permafrost (1 dps).
2 - All hit Boss "if" there are no adds.
3 - When (2) elite burrowers show up, they are offtanked on permafrost, dpsers burn adds down.
4 - In phase 2, everyone stay on permafrost to avoid spikes from Anub + keep shooting Frost Spheres.
5 - Hit the non-elite Swarm Scarabs from far, to avoid their 1-min dot.
6 - In phase 3, tank+spank, burn all cooldowns, do not top ppl's health because of leeching swarm.
7 - Healers watch out for ppl with penetrating cold or impaled by Anub in Phase 2.

I kinda of noobilized, and with the boss at 1%, was too slow to Soulshatter after agro suddenly peaked when tank stopped generating it, and I died miserably.

My fault, should have soulshattered on time. Because of this, I'm going into emergency procedures and will now specifically train 0.5 sec soulshatter hit on a close key, alt-2 seems good, right below alt-f1, every man for himself.

As to the loot, it was pretty good, 3 epics, and the TOC10 achievement is now in the bag.

Fight log here.
Icecrown citadel, I'm ready for you.

Or may be not. After the kill, we made a trial on TOC10 heroic, but found out that the timers for the bosses are so small that we had Gormok at 50% when the Jormungar twins showed up. Needless to say, we'll need an avg of 4k dps to do it, and there were only 2 persons with that dmg.

Imba healing makes a difference

Today we went TOC10 again, with a not so pro but quite pushing forward group.
As a result, we downed the 4 bosses, which was something, considering that a few ppl , namely one of the healers hadn't set her feet inside TOC yet.

The fight results can be seen here (with a Razorscale guild kill too).

The amazing part of the logs is to watch on the healing power of our guildie druid, absolutely imba.

I got myself a Blade of the Silver Disciple, item 232. It beats the Kel'thuzad and the Soulscribe from Yogg-Saron 25-man. A lucky roll !

On another topic, I won a Bronze Drake, weeeee.

And last but not least, I'm now above 7000 achievement points, thanks to some nice Isle of Conquest solo achievements.

Xaire friends

2 years ago I pwned Xaire . Today in WG, after a 15 min bitch fight between 50 idiots blaming each other for the failure attacking Wintergrasp fortress, I sent a "/1 yawn..".

Guess what ?

Some jerk quickly answered "and you netcownt, owning Xaire with pots and flask and rotating keyboard, youre real pro..."

Looks like Xaire still has friends on this side LOL

He forgot to mention that:
1 - Xaire had a full 70 PVP gear while I had lvl 60 gear (T2 head can be seen on movie), and that:
2- He was an engineer and used his reflect tricks.
So he could use engineering crap, but I, as an alchemist, could not use flaks or pots, even considering that he could use pots and flasks too if he wanted.
3- And as long as I play WoW, I never used keyboard for turning.

Oh well.. sure was fun to see someone remembers it. Xaire was good indeed.
Drakonus was the only SP to kick my ass in the old lvl 60 days.
But I KICKED HIS ASS !! HA !

TOC: A miss and a big hit !

The last days, I missed a TOC10 run where the guild killed the faction champions.
I was sad not to have participated in the kill, but we nearly got ppl for 25 runs, so we must give everyone a chance to participate and learn the fights.

Yesterday, I went in to see the Twin Valkyr fights. Tbh, as I did not go the day before, I had not learned the fight, so I had to watch the video and look at the WoWWiki info in a rush. I hate that, I like to prepare in advance. Then, we tried them, 5 times, and down she came, after we settled the role for everyone to hunt the orbs.




The fight is surprisingly easy, once you know what to do.
Two Valkyrs, a dark and a light one.
The raid is evenly divided in two.
Lets take the raid fighting the DarkBane.
-That raid must click on a Light portal for its essence, to get a buff.
-Then its nuke time until orbs show up.
-Because you're light, you hunt light orbs. If you touch a dark orb, you get 7K damage, but if you touch a light orb, you get a speed and damage buff. So.... forget about DPS'ing, dot the boss and take your time to collect orbs.
-Each Valkyr will trigger 2 special abilities: Vortex and heal (actually, a few more, but I think this sums it up)
-If e.g. Darkbane triggers Dark Vortex, all light essenced players must hurry to click on a dark portal to get dark essenced. Failure to do so will kill you
-If e.g. Darkbane triggers a heal process, it's also shielded so u have to unshield and then interrupt the heal. For this, all the dark dps ppl have to click on a light portal to get light essenced and dps her. When the heal has been interrupted, you click on your dark portal and get back to dpsing your Lightbane.
That's about all. I got a nice pair of boots from the fight, I was the only clothie.
Unfortunately, unless I get hit capped, I wont be able to use them as I miss 43 hit :(

Then........ we nearly got enough ppl for 25-TOC, so we asked a few 2-3 ppl from another guild, namely a very good hunter and we tried it. I dpsed quietly until the end and down the 3 bosses came. The fucking yeti targeted me once when I was stunned against a pillar, but now I learned what to do: See a pilar on one side ? run to the other :) 120 ms latency also helps.



In the end, I got an imensely good chest drop (/roll 92), but I'll have to give up my t8.5 chest. The chest without gems or enchant 30 spell power more than the t8.5 !!!

After the fights, I played with wow log analyzers a bit for practice: Here I am, top DPS on TOC10, top guild DPS on TOC25.
WoWMeterOnline
WorldOfLogs
WoWWebStats
WoWWebStats Aesyr vs Toede

EDIT: While checking the 25 fight for the effectiveness of the Mana Spring Totem (I had to lifetap 22 times!), I found out that one of the guest DK's was unholy ! Crap ! I could have Doom Cursed 10 times ! Ffs, I need an addon that tells me when there's an Unholy DK in raid ! Boomkins and Shadowpriests are easy to spot, but DKs... ok, they supposedly have a pet, but still... there should be an addon that tells us "SHADOW PRIEST IN RAID", "BOOMKIN IN RAID", "UNHOLY DK IN RAID" !!!!



Last but not least, it's September 1st and so... I got my 12th beer in the mailbox !

Wee 5k dps

My latest upgrades worked, today I tried VoA10 class run, VoA25, OS25.
And guess what, average dps > 5K, with 5.3K on OS25 and over 6K on drakes.

Needless to say, overdps'ed guys from Ulduar raiding guilds, now fighting against AEnema, Echoes, Titans, Nemesis dudes. And I've got a TOC5 heroic weapon HAHAHA.

I'm scared just to think what my next upgrade, shoulders 7.5 -> 3.2 EoT, will do.

I'now got a slight problem, which is to decide on wether to get the T9 shoulders and aim for the 2pc bonus set, which REALLY don't like for T9, or go for the EoT 45 emblem ones, keeping in mind I've got 2 EoT shoulders to choose from, with haste+spirit or crit+hit. Considering I'm nearly hit-capped...the "healer" one will actually give me 40 spell power more, plus 59 haste instead of 59 crit.

The sad part.. we're doing 1xToc10 a week, Ulduar going snail pace, ToC25 is still a failure due to missing ppl and ppl showing up and saying "so, what's this fight about?".

/sigh

On a new topic, I've ordered a AMD 4800x2 to replace +3500, hopefully the 1M cache per core, 2.6ghz overclocking and dual core for some tasks will help me in 25-raids to sustain my 40 FPS.

Crusader's Arena Nightmare and a big DPS push

The last two days, we tried TOC10, and we downed the first and second bosses.

The first one was easy, the group knew what to do, and the Yeti came down fast.

The second one, Jaraxxus, took two tries, most of the group had never seen him, but it's easy. Just dps the boss, turn to adds if they show up, move if you've got the Legion Flame on you, and keep away of the portal and of the volcanos. That's about it for dps'ing.
For healers it's a bit more complicated, because of Incinerated Flesh and the need to heal 30K or so in order to disable the healing absorption.
Fire resistance helps, Shadow ward too.

The third one (I think it's the latest one) was... a nightmare.
It's been a few years since I've done Arena 5v5, actually I did pretty well as priest in TBC, but I never locked it that much.
Oh well, the Faction champions is 6 vs 10.
In our random 6, there came a resto druid, a shammy, a priest, a lock, a paladin and a warrior.

I'm sure Blizzard must be having tons of fun in Arenas training these guys, because they are so tuned, so tuned, it's damn hard to get a single one down.

We've been struggling, most notably as our group composition is not so good, and we keep trying to go for the druid, or for the shammy, and the other one heals the first one. CC works very badly, banish lasts for 1 sec or so, Fear is a bit better, but PVP rules rule so after 3 casts, immune they become.

We downed the druid once, but our group was scattered already.

A pain.


On the bright side, I got a belt drop in TOC10, and I upgraded all my emblems of conquest gear, meaning I'm now T8.25 4/5 with a conquest necklace.

The amazing part is that, if I keep the T7.5 and a TOC5 HC gear, I get roughly the same DPS, ye, about 4500 DPS on Dummy, with a peak DPS nearing 5K.

That's pretty impressive, considering I've beaten the 5K dps record in VOA the day before.

I can't wait to test my new gear on Patchwerk, Emalon, etc.

Heroics are ridiculous now, last night I went with a good PUG, and we slaughthered a lot of instances, UK in 20 mins, HOS in 30 mins, including all achievements, etc. A laugh, it almost looks like a private server.

Holy days

Nothing like a pack of holidays in the bag away from WoW to recharge the batteries.
Now I've back and... Cataclysm announced. It had been leaked weeks ago, together with the new races, goblins and worgen.

So yesterday I reactivated my raid world, not with much success. Even though T8.5 is now given for free (mostly), most ppl keep doing their feeble dps and healing, not knowing what to do on bosses, etc.

I started also doing some new stuff for optimization purposes, which is to record every raid fight in WWS, so I can post-analyze it. Recount is nice but it resets every raid.

- Tried VoA25 with a PUG, and obviously failed. Did 4.4K dps, though.
- Did VoA10 with another PUG, this one seemed good, and I beat a record: 5.1K dps on Emalon and 4.9K dps on Archavon, with room for improvement. I had a boomkin and a shammy in raid, no shadow priest or unholy DK.
- Did Freya in Ulduar10 with the guild and seemed much easier than before.
- Tried TOC25 with the guild and some other guilds but (TOC23 actually) failed. People simply can't move away on time from the 3rd mini-boss. Strangely my WWS log missed the fight.

I finally created my Flask of the North, that's 47 spell power for free.

I also bought lots of trash mounts and I'm now with 75 mounts, but with my drop luck, I'll never get the 101th mount before patch 3.3.

Today I'm going for 4/4 T8/T8.5, as I will get 58x2 emblems of conquest. I hope that will help my DPS.

Also, I think I'm going to try some PVP leveling with a dualboxing pair.

Trial of the Crusader for Dummies (Boss 1)

Our guild tried TOC25 normal and failed, as ppl kept doing the same mistakes, part of them went inside without looking at the videos, etc. The usual /sigh.

So the next day we tried TOC10. And it worked, although it took some time for everyone to understand what to do and when.

We killed it, and I came out top dps on the kill attempt. Rewarding for me.

But shame, I overaggroed once and died on a previous attempt. Kick me.

Here it goes (from a DPS perspective, of course, nearly no references for healer and tanks):

Phase 1: Gormok
- Tank tanks (it's a bit + complicated but...)
- Ranged and healers spread apart, far away from him to avoid a stomp.
- Run away from fire patches.
- When snobolds appear on the back of anyone, most DPS (at least ranged) kill it.
- When snobolds stop coming, nuke the boss.
It's really easy. The only problem is when DPS are asleep and 3-4 snobolds get behind ppl, so they can't dps, heal, etc, as they get interrupted.

Phase 2: Acidmaw and Dreadscale
- Dot Dreadscale a bit (weakness too if possible, helps the tank+healer)
- Nuke Acidmaw.
- Acidmaw will poison ppl, I noticed not one, but several ppl at one time, so it seems to be zone oriented. Poisoned ppl will get paralyzed soon, so they have to run to whoever get Burning Bile. In the beginning, only the Dreadscale tank will get Biled, so run to him or paralyze and die as he can't come to you. Lock teleport helps. A poisoned person gets green. A biled person gets a burning fire around him.
- After they both go underground the first time, 2 ppl will get a Burning Bile, ie, Dreadscale tank and a random, so... beware, it burns ppl around, so stay spread.. and away from Dreadscale cone !
- When Acidmaw is dead, nuke Dreadscale. Dreadscale will get 50% + dmg, so either keep Weakness or COE/COD.
- Biled persons must be healed through.
- I once died suddenly from a Dreadscale attack (non-agro) and I couldnt check on log what happened. But it looks like I got a Burning Bile and a Fire Spit in short succession (1sec), as I lost >24k HP. I nearly used my HS but it was so fast...
- Both mobs go underground and back up, and seem to reset aggro(?).
- On Dreadscale, my aggro suddenly went skyrocket, he came for me and bye bye. Didn't understand what happened as I was around 50% last time I checked (usually I do a threat check every 2-3 secs)
- Use Fire/Nature resistance Auras/Totems/Aspect.
This is the critical phase, once you killed these, you have it in the pocket !

Phase 3: Icehowl
- A bit yeti, tank him and wait for his charge.
- Sends everyone against the walls.
- Never EVER be with your back to a gate, a bug will get you frozen and you'll die.
- After he stuns everyone, he'll charge someone, rotating to his direction, going backwards and then charging. During this time, you get free and a speed buff, so RUN SIDEWAYS like hell. If you are on a corner with a pillar on your side (take your time while stunned to rotate the camera and find out where you are), run to the opposite side of the pillar)
- If he kills someone, he'll probably wipe the raid, as he gets enraged. If not, he gets stunned (head on the wall hurts), and takes more damage for 10 secs , so use your cooldowns and beat him. Aggro can be a problem, I noticed the Omen alarm at the 9-10 sec mark as I was overdpsing.
- He has an artic breath that freezes ppl and does frost dmg. Frost Aura or Totem.
That's about it, easy boss, as long as you don't lag, or don't go AFK when he charges !

The loot ?
It dropped some mail stuff and a Wand, that I lost against a fellow Lock.
Meanwhile I've got DKP for sale, as I can't use it. May be on TOC25, that I will miss next Sunday because I'll be in Alentejo :(

Blizzard's 3.2 is out. Or is it ?

Yay, 3.2 is here.

- A new PVP instance, laggy like hell, like AV was in the oldschool days. It looks nice, but unplayable, at least for me.

- A new Trial of Champions 5-instance, in normal and heroic. An instance ? More like an annoying way to spend time, with a long lore introduction, fun to watch the first times, with Jaina and Thrall watching, but utterly boring afterwards. A static arena scenario. And the loot ? Oh my god, the loot, in heroic, it rewards lvl 219 items, a sword better than my normal Ulduar one, and a cloth head on pair with the best lvl 226 Ulduar heroic head. Enough said, don't go anywhere else, just farm this place !

- A new Trial of Crusader 10/25-instance. An instance ? A fake instance ! The first boss (a 3-wave of 4 mini/medium-bosses) is the ONLY boss. I was suspicious, since no information about Lord Jaraxxus was written in wowwiki.com. Now I confirmed it. Hehe, Blizzard green bananas :



- A new set of dailies, very simple ones, to kill a bunch of mobs or bomb a few boats like the Sun Offensive bombing, and basically to farm some more seals/coins.

- A new emblem system. No more medals of heroism and valor. No more medals ? Wrong, you now got conquest and triumph. Everywhere you go, you get Conquest. So... an heroic gives you 4 conquests. Naxx 10 gives you 1 conquest per boss. And Naxx 25 ??? 1 conquest per boss. So forget Naxx 25 and the need to coordinate an idiot PUG, just farm Naxx 10 with your guildies. Or better, go heroic farming, you do heroics in 30 mins, the rate is probably higher than Naxx. And Ulduar ? Oh my god, I don't know, but if Ulduar 10 also gives 1 conquest, I'm going to kill someone at Blizzard, as that way, no one will bother to set their foot in Ulduar. For the gear it's not worth, as we've seen that TOC-5 heroic gives better gear ! /cry, I wanna see Yogg-Saron !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- A T9 set. This is of course to reward the hardcore dudes that need something to do in the next months until they release Icecrown Citadel. As it is now, they have nothing to do ! Most hardcore guilds will kill the TOC bosses at their first tries, and then do some achievements, but it'll be over in a month. So they'll spend the rest of the time farming their T9 set.

The yada yada and simcraft

I find it amusing that ppl go to ElitistJerks, watch the nice DPS bars with the different specs and glyphs and immediately say: This is the best spec, I use the best, so all other specs are for noobs. And so they behave like idiots.

That's all very fine if you have the perfect raid composition and exactly the gear stats as described by EJ and a perfect fight like Patchwerk and ....

HOWEVER... 99% of the time, you don't.

But still the funny ppl state the same things on wow-forums and such, e.g. that "Glyph of Life Tap" should not be used in Deep Destro, and should be replaced by "Glyph of Immolate". Why ? Because all high end players do it. And why do they ?
Oh... because simcraft runs from EJ tell them that. And so they do it.


Well, here is my EJ simcraft run, with my gear and my study which shows that Life Tap is not worse.

The only difference between the simcraft runs (that do the same nr of lifetaps since, on 5 mins target dummy fight, there's not enough mana) are the glyphs.

Data:
gear_stamina=1012
gear_intellect=748
gear_spirit=565
gear_spell_power=1879
gear_hit_rating=401
gear_crit_rating=408
gear_haste_rating=249
tier7_2pc=1
tier8_2pc=1
meta_gem=chaotic_skyflare
items=sundial_of_the_exiled/dying_curse
max_time=300
optimal_raid=0
talents=http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?warlock=000000000000000000000000000003220030003000000000000000005203205210331051335230351
actions=fire_stone/fel_armor/summon_pet,imp
actions+=/curse_of_elements/immolate/conflagrate/chaos_bolt/incinerate/life_tap
glyphs=conflagrate/incinerate/"immolate or life_tap"
infinite_mana="0 or 1"

Results with infinite_mana=1=> 0 life taps:
DPS(glyph_LT)=4120
DPS(glyph_IMMO)=4191
Results with infinite_mana=0=> 10 life taps:
DPS(glyph_LT)=4046
DPS(glyph_IMMO)=4023

Notice that DPS with glyph_IMMO is higher, but it decreases by 17dps for every life tap you do. DPS with glyph_LT is lower, but it decreases by only 7dps for every life tap you do. So we want to find the magic number of life taps for which glyph_LT is worth.
4120-7.4*x = 4191-16.8*x <=> x=7.55

CONCLUSION:
If in a typical (is there such a thing) fight I do 8 life taps or more, I should go for glyph_LT. Otherwise I go for glyph_Immo. And the difference... is not huge. Unless you do NO life tapping. So you ask:

Why should I life tap ?
1 - Taking in account most Ulduar fights require movement (Razorscale, XT, Council, Kologarn, etc, etc), You have to, anyway. How much ? Depends. A LOT. On gear, on RNG, on raid composition, on the skill of other players, their lag, your lag, etc.
2 - You need mana. Purists will say "but I dont need, I got the perfect raid". Congratulations. Most ppl don't.

Ehrenmord FTW !

Ein neues Wort ist geboren: Ehrenmord

In the last days, the german language has formalized the usage of several new words, related with things like credit crunch, afterhours partying, but also... honor killing.

The Ehrenmord word as I know it has been used in the past for kills caused by religious dogmas, like those existing in radical islamism. E.g. if your sister behaves imorally, you have the right(!) to kill her, ie, to perform an Ehrenmord !

HOWEVER, I can't stop thinking that usage of Ehrenmord has widespreaded since 2005 because of World of Warcraft.

The game has in deed a global impact.

Pets ftw and something completely different

Anyway.. tonight, dinged my 75th pet, and got to pug Ulduar, getting 2 achievements.

Talking about pugging, my guild is not working anymore, ppl not showing, little talking, no answering in guild chats when we try to run an OS10+1D and ask ppl to come, nothing happening, everyone pugging... /cry.

It's starting to seem like the time has come to move on, though I'm still trying...

"I've lost that loving feeling"

350 ppl on Chromaggus at 10PM.
>1000 ppl on Frostmane at 10PM.

It says everything about how empty my server is.

OMG Atic Atac the old Spectrum guild was so perfect, 3 raids a night, they are a Top10 guild, Yogg Saron down in heroic, doing hardmodes now... /cryalot
Burning Steppes guild from my friend João doing good... wtb faction transfer !!!!!!!!!! Am i going to betray Alliance ? How can I ? :(

Bored and my new class: DK

The last days I've been working on getting the Scorchling pet from MGT. Since I couldn't get the Ashes of A'lar, at least I got the pet, after 20 runs (ouch), making it my 74th one.

I also finished Oracles exalting task (for the 2nd time, omg), and reached 35 exalted.

After this, and after thinking of how MGT heroic could be run, I kind of start thinking about leveling Shareth the Heartstealer, my unloved Death Knight.

And so I did. And... oh my god, what a blast. The class is totally overpowered, at least at this level. I leveled about one level per hour, from 60 to 63.

While doing it, I was able to solo the first 2 mobs in Ramparts (60 elites), I was able to solo Azzurius, the Elite 63 demon in Hellfire.... I'll probably be able to solo the Overlord :)

I chose a deep Blood spec, it's healing, dpsing, it' simmply unbelieveable, almost like the .god .cheat .kill commands I used on private server tests.

I'm starting to envision the future. Shareth tanking mobs and Netcownt in the back, dpsing with no aggro.

Frostbitten !!!

After nearly a week where Aotona and Putridus eluded me, last night I got her, thanks to Tarithel and her warning. Actually it was my kid that said "Hey pappy, your computer just made a loud noise". Weeee.

Today, I logged and minutes later Putridus showed up. He's so big that he was targettable from the other side of Icecrown, amazing !!! He also has 75K and patrols near elites, but luckily, I got him in a place with no hostiles.

Ok, job done, one less thing to do in WOTLK.

What now ?

A little progress

RARE PETS
In the last days, I've been hunting rare pets, and in one hour, I got both a (1/1000) dragonling and the (1/2000) oozeling, bringing my total to 71.

I can now get the 75 pets, however, I'm still trying to get 1 more (hyacinth(!!) or firefly or a cheap horde pet hehe), in order not to spend my argent seals (got 200 now), so I can save for the flying mount later.

MOUNTS
I also recomputed my total mounts, and I can achieve 95 (if I'm lucky enough with baron, oracle egg and two zul'gurub mounts, plus AQ40 ones). So theoretically, with an additional 500 seals (!!!) I can get my 100 mount achievement. Or I wait for 3.2 or 3.3 and get it easier.

My guildie pal also told me that the violet drake is nothing less than 310%, I had missed that !! HAHA, so in September I'll have one. Nicey.

PVE
I did a Ulduar hardmode, easy mode actually, if ppl have enough gear lvl to do it and play smart, avoiding the frost beams.

PVP
I got the EOS assassin one, 5 kills in 4 towers, woopideedoo.

Exalted
Another front I'm fighting is the 40 exalted reputations.

Since I was slacker enough not to run Black Temple or Karazhan with Netcownt, I had to find some replacement reputations.

So I beat a record, getting from neutral to exalted with Thorium Brotherhood in 24 hours. It was so easy, just farm Searing Gorge underground lizzards, then farm BRD for dark iron residues, and then farm Molten Core (with my nice skinner alt)... and of course, farm the Action House and guild bank. I spent about 700 gold, most of it in heavy leather to level it faster. Actually it was a bit silly, the cores were much cheaper, but fck it, I'm exalted :)

Total exalted reputations are now 33, needing only Zul'Gurub, 3 of the Steemweedle Cartel, and the old TBC ones I slacked also, Lower City and Honor hold, and Oracles (for the 3rd time, I bring a Sholazar faction to exalted, OMG!)

RARES
Tchan tchan only 3 rares to go, 1 from Sholazar (Aotona, the worst place possible, right on top of the oracle quest givers), and 2 from Icecrown (same shit, due to argent quests)


The rest of the time it's been crappy due to holidays, loss of interest in raiding, etc, etc.

I'm not so sure anymore the spirit will be back, considering dpsers started to gquit.

Hail the King. You are Immortal Michael

Flame Warden and a few other things

In the last days, I've been concentrating on getting my 75 pets.
I've got now 68, with some luck I'll get a rare and a fishing one, and complete my thing.
It's a pity that I didn't know the mechanics to get the fishing pets. All pets are actually crocodiles, obtainable by the random daily Crocodiles in the City. Unfortunately they are BoP, otherwise I'd have my 5 70+ toons going for it.
To help with whelpling farming (1 more to go), I had to code some nice ideas on my "dualboxing helper" application, one of which is OCR to get past the stupid idea of Blizzard of not allowing data to be saved on disk. Oh well, nothing DCOORDS and a little C++ won't get around. 600 whelps later I got my Swamp of Sorrows whelpling, and I've now turned to Wetlands. My kid also helps a bit, hunting whelps, but I dont want her to get too much interest with WoW... until now I've allowed her to drive her little lvl 5 cow in Mulgore, and that was it.

On PVE, a few Ulduar runs, but nothing new on the horizon. Mirmiron is still up, and Ulduar 25 is not working, ppl are slacking too much.

One guildie is pushing ppl to try to be more aggressive, asking for hard-mode runs, which is actually a great idea, but not with much support until now. We did one last night, and may be getting 2 conquest medals will give ppl a push forward.

On PVP, i'm totally stalled, my partner hasnt showed up, and I've got 75K HP and nothing to spend it, as I still got 1399 rating. Damn.

Luckily, I had the Midsummerfest achievements to do, but they are too easy, I completed them in one day.

Tbh the hardest thing is to solo Atune, the Frost Lord, in Slave Pens. Soloing is out of the question. I dualboxed it with a lot of healing, and took me 4 attempts to do it. Now I got the hang of it. It's a damn thing as I can only do 2 trials a day.

Oh well, nothing else new on the Western front, except the release of patch 3.2 info and my fucking back pain, that's getting worse again, and not allowing me to sit for more than a few minutes without medication. Fuck it.

Kick my ass

To begin with... I still have four lvl 200 items.

Yesterday was one of those days... I spent 3+ hours in Naxx25 half-guild/half-pug to get a chance on KTZ head to complete my T7... did the most dmg while I was there, and finally... two heads dropped from KTZ, and fuck, I missed the roll.

That made me think on the purpose of helping alts from other guilds or guild newbies gearing up from blues/greens directly to 213 while I'm stuck with 200 gear, and then having to roll with them with 1/N chance.


Then I went to Ulduar, did everything perfect, coming 2nd overall behind a great DK but again, my good will prevailed over my gearing needs, and I gave up Razor's cloth head to others that lacked dps... later I went to check it, and found out the head was the best head in game for me at this moment, with some tweaking. I also found out that some of the "others" had equivalent gear, and had done half the damage.
And exactly the same thing happened with a dropped wand in XT-002 later on.

Should have gotten the head/wand, should have bidded more /Kick /Kick /Kick /Kick /Kick

As a fellow hunter said.. we're too good to noobs.

I was never good bidding watches and tshirts in thailand LOL

In my old guild, items had fixed DKP prices, and ppl would whisper their wish to the master looter, and then a council of officers would check on the wishers, their gear, attendance, etc, and give it to whoever "deserved" it the most. It was fallible, yes, but avoided things like DKP burning, and credited ppl like me that don't wish to fight others over a stupid thing like a virtual gearing item, or think others deserve it more, for guild helping purposes.

After last night, 10-raids showed up to be more appealing than 25-raids.
- Ppl have to know what to do, or they wont succeed. No slackers.
- The speed of fight is higher, we kill more bosses per hour.
- Rewards are given to whoever needs it the most, discussed, or rolled with 50% chance, not bidded. So, more my style.

To make my wow mood darker, today I went for arenas to get from 1450 to 1500 rating, and ended up with 1399, after a sequence of discipriest + pala/rogue combos that me and my fellow mage simply couldnt handle. And the worst part of it is that I didnt buy the +1400 rating furious item, coz I wanted to spend it on the +1450 item.. and now I got a bunch of honor to spend and not enough rating. Seriously, it can't get any worse, can it ?

Wait.... this means, I'm not actually having fun playing atm. or at least, playing it like I am now. So... better stop to think wether my time is worth this crap.

The Frozen Wastes of Midnight

25 years later, I'm again a Champion of the Frozen Wastes, not in Midnight, not in Icemark, but in Northrend.

This week I went to Eye of Eternity with a PUG, and owned it easily.

Phases 1 and 2 are too easy to be commented, phase 3 is a bit of a problem for a newbie there, but it was ok.



The last days I've been hunting rares for the Frostbitten achievement. Only 9 to go.

PVP wise, the ladder is slow above 1400. 1500 is within reach this week, lets hope we make it.

PVE wise, we're stalled, guild is lacking something to push forward. There's will, there's only 2 bosses left before Yogg Saron.. but "casual" means ppl show up when they can, there are no fixed days, so we never know when we can go or not.

As to pets and mounts:
PETS:
I'm stuck with 65 pets, 10 to go.
5 of them can be the Argent Tournament ones, but boy it's painful to get to 200 medals. And then I still need 5 more, from fishing dailies or AH or farming like hell for the dragonlings.
MOUNTS:
53 at the moment. Yesterday I made a computation and... I can get 95 pets, by paying 10K gold, and assuming I get the ZG mounts, the zhevra mount and the baron mount.
I'm farming reseach medals for the 2 Halaa mounts, the 170 medals I already have after using a funny lock-only "ability".
But from 95 to 100.. there's simply no way I can do it, unless I go for the expensive Argent Tournament mounts (100-150 medals each), and it's simply crazy.

As time goes by

I've spent the last days dedicated to raiding and arenas and not doing battlegrounds at all, while finishing the Argent Crusade shores, ie, become exalted and get the Crusader title. Far too easy, but a good money.

In the end, I'm still short medals to buy all 5 pets, and I'll need nearly all of them to get the 75 pets from my current 61. Got an Azure whelpling for 800g, and a the Dalaran horde-only kitty for 1000g. Boy that sucks. The rest of the whelplings I hope to farm and get from eggs.

Arenawise, I'be been running with a guildie mage, and learning on what can and not be done, like e.g. that mages can't polymorph druids, and that a dps duo is in general better burning the opponnent dps than killing the healer while the opponent dps is loose. Boy are healers hard these days. 1300 rating, going smoothly up.

Raidwise, a lot of improvement. Got myself a decent Soulfire MH and another Ulduar ring, Naxx HC wand, bringing my average gear to 210, and my spellpower to 1803.


All bosses seen and learned up to Freya, it'll be a walk in the park from now on.
Thorim is our current stall point, and no solution for the arena mobs yet.



I had a misstep on Hodir, where I simply kept getting too much damage, while ppl talked about runes and the need to run away, but I couldn't see any fucking runes, only some falling rain sometimes and then a snowy platform. After some searching, it turns out that Blizzard decided, for 3.1, to add a nice "checkbox" on video settings "Projected Textures", and tooltip it with "disabling this will greatly improve performance". Fuck it, I unchecked it... and guess what.. that shit setting disables rune viewing on Hodir, so I was most time on top of runes, getting screwed :(

It's a pity that we don't have enough geared ppl for 25-Ulduar, our latest tries there was a wipe, after one successful clear of the first 3 bosses. Our leader decided to set class officers, so I've now got the job of making a health checkup and tip list for our fellow and future lockies, so we can help'em improve their dps. It's not possible to see ppl dps'ing below the tank level, it simply won't work.

Zul'Gurubing

This week I decided to look for Zul'Gurub and go towards a solo/dualboxing the whole instance, starting of course with the mount bosses.

And guess what, both down at the first try in PVP spec + PVE gear, dualboxed The'kal and soloed Mandokir.

How ?



On Thekal, my priest keeps mana burning the damn Zealot that likes healing the boss trio. It takes a while to set it up coz the zealot only needs 200 mana to heal. Let felguard get aggro on all of them, pop metamorphosis and pull tiger adds to kill them with fire aura. Then, I do a dance near the wall everytime felguard gets stunned and the trio comes for me. When both are nearly dead (5-10%), remember to 2-dot all 3, because when felguard or you gets stunned the ress timer will elapse when one dies and he gets ressed. On Part2, tank and spank, pop metamorph for the tiger adds, that's all, folks.

Mandokir it's even easier. Set the add on passive by the speaker, make the pet do a white strike on him and go passive again. Mandokir will not aggro until speaker is dead, so you can go up and kiss his ass if you want, and then jump to the little platform, setting a teleport circle. Then kill the speaker. Mandokir and his pet will agro the felguard but will pull you shortly to him. Teleport back to the platform. Shortly after, pet will just ignore you and then it's tank+spank to the end. Felguard can handle it so easily, just health funnel, set curse of weakness, and keep nuking. In my case he actually teleported to my little platform, as well as the felguard (!!!) so I jumped and then went up the stairs and nuked him from the top of the zigurat.

No mounts. But a nice rep farming on trash+boss+coins, so exalted is not a dream now.

Today I'm gonna try other bosses.. may be up to Hakkar.

===================================================


Yesterday I went to see Ulduar's Kologarn.
Easy fight for a ranged, but died once on the beams when we killed him, by walking backwards...shame on me.
Prio 1: Get out of the fucking beam, strafing left and right or tbh I like the oval walking better, and on 10-men, there's a lot of space on the right side. Ah, and NEVER walk sideways+backwards. Did it once and died.
Prio 2: Nuke right arm. When arm is dead, aoe adds... giving time for warrior to aggro, or you're dead meat and waste time => Keep soulshatter handy just in case.
Prio 3: When nothing else moves, nuke boss.

Felguard was ok here.. except may be when he died suddenly, I think because of a nearby beam. Passive imp might be better.

Alternative strategy is to kill the left arm instead of the boss, since he looses 15% for every gone arm, making it easier for the healers.
It's a hard fight for the poor melees, coz of the nearby beams, and for the healers, coz of the arm grabbing.

Fun too.

===================================================



Last but not least, went to Emalon Heroic and got my first furious item, and as well as top dps as bonus.

PVE
11 x 200 items
6 x 213 items

WTB >213 gear !!!

Old Crafty-ed

4084 fishes later, (OMFG!), I finally hooked Orgrimmar's Old Crafty. It took me a few months, but he came to papa.

With so much time to spare during fishing, I decided to compute what's the chance of NOT getting the fish after N attempts.
It goes like this:
P(getting-the-fish-in-the-next-attempt=P=0.1% according to various sources.
so
P(NOT-getting-it-after-N-attempts)=1-(1-(1-P)^N)).
For the 4084th attempt, the chance of NOT getting it is small, 0.999^4084 = 1.7%.
So 98.3% of the ppl fishing this bastard have it already by the 4084th attempt.
But not me, of course, I had to be within those 1.7%.
My bad luck is a curse from the past.

During the last days, I've built a nice KoS list (VanasKoS is a great addon in deed), so that from now on, I'm gonna pay a visit to everyone, from lvl 1 to lvl 80, that ganked me or yelled in Orgrimmar calling for help to gank me, a poor naked fisherman.

Bastards, you'll pay for it.




On the PVE side, The Guild again surprised me. After a long wait and after I signed-up and wiped once on Thaddius with a no-name guild (remember not to do that again lol), ppl showed up and we went to try Ulduar 25, after having wiped with 18 ppl last try, leaving Leviathan at 30%. This time he easily came down, with me happilly chopping and splashing oil in front the caterpillar bossie.



Then we went for Razorscale, and after a few wipes to learn that priorities are:
1- get the hell away of blue fire
2- dps sentinels if they show up
3- aoe guardians and watchers in ez mode
4- dps boss from the back until he goes 50%
5- dps the boss from the center of the room until he agonizingly dies
we downed him and called it a night.
Pretty good as half the team had never set foot inside Uldie.

All in all, a happily way of discarding some dark clouds that passed over the last days with ppl leaving and the usual confusion about dkp for multiple raids. I remember Portucale solved it by using DKP1 for SSC/TK and DKP2 for MH/BT. Let's see how it goes here.


Now...what to do ? Go rare and pet hunting, may be ? Out of things to do again :)

59 pets, I'll be able to get 65 with Argent rewards, but then...it'll be a nightmare to go up to 75.

Upgrade Kit for Ulduar

I finally got Emalon, the nasty VoA boss, down with the guild, Hurrah !!

And weeee I've set my feet in Ulduar, normal, where we killed Ignis and tried the Iron Council, and heroic, where we tried Leviathan.

Some funny fights, a little different from the no brain single boss tank and spank my dps is higher than yours fight.

It's also rewarding to see that my dps is ok for Ulduar, 10 at least, and probably, also for 25.

After simcraft, I've been doing some funny trials with Rawr, another gear checker and optimizer, finding that my empiric way of selecting the best gear is pretty close to what should be for locks. I finally started an official "gear wish list" for high end PVE.

And luckily, or not so luckily, on my Naxx25 run, all the 3 items on the top list dropped. But, there's always a but, we had a "borrowed" priest that came only if in exchange he could roll on the Life and Death sword from Gothik, a 10% drop, exactly the same I wanted. Oh well, since I had dkp'ed the other two items, it seemed unfair to get the MH, even if it was absolutely the best dps upgrade for me, so I agreed to give him the sword..oh well, another time will come, I didn't want to seem greedy and say "no u can't have it, u're not a guildie, get lost, give it to me". He did help us, we prolly wouldn't have raided coz we needed a priest MC on Razuvious... next time I'll use Tarithel and get the f*cking sword LOL !!!!

Eye of Eternity is on my list... pugging requires the achievement, and guild isn't to keen on doing it, let's see if next week will be the one I'll become champion of the frozen wastes.

PVP.. ahah, this week I did a few arenas with Tarithel in shadow...not bad, I did 6-7, with keyclone doing mostly crap, like resetting shadowform, etc. I think I'll go back to my self-made tool with discipline spec, it seems to work better, and may be I can get to a decent rate.

Next goal is to get a real 3v3/5v5 team and go skyrocket.

Achievementwise, worth mentioning

- got Gurubashi Arena Grand Master.
- got the children's week stuff done in record time.

The to do list is:

-get Old Crafy... FFS 1500 FISH AND THE DAMN THING REFUSES TO SHOW UP!
-start hunting the Northrend rares. Only got Dirkie down so far.

And weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee I've crossed the 6000 achievement mark, 39th on Chromaggus.

Problem is... Blizzard has created a big number of new achievements for Ulduar, and ... I will not be able to do most of them, specially in Heroic mode. So in absolute numbers, I'll soon get bypassed by pro guild idiots... but fuck it.

Nobless oblige

Nobless oblige, and therefore, one must act accordingly. The Noblegarden week and achievement are pretty fun, one gets to go to the low level villages where WoW life started some years ago. Job done in two days, and now back to championing.
I've been slowly gathering rep and medals in the Argent Tournament, which is a bit tedious, but reasonable.

We should have to fight other players to win some rewards, not fight the computer champions that are totally crap.


Dailies, once again, provide lots of gold for little effort, and... are boring.

I'll try to reach exalted and 1000 dailies done. After that, I don't think I'll be patient enough to get the Argent mount.

As to raiding, I still have to set my foot in Ulduar.

Naxx is now pretty much "done", although I still need a few items to consider myself ready for Ulduar.

I'd like Naxx25 to be run with achievements in sight, since going every week doing the same thing is kinda boring, but it seems that half the guild is not bothering with them, so I might as well forget it. I'll try to join a Naxx10 team going for those.

It seems like Ulduar is getting nerfed, meaning 10 will be feasible without too much effort. Nice. Considering most things have been nerfed in WoW to allow everyone to enjoy the game, I'm for it.

Eye of Eternity, I really want to see that fight. And, also need it to become Champion of the Frozen Wastes. I'll try doing that with the guild this week.

PVP wise... arena season 6 started. Waiting for my guild partner to start 2vs2 seriously. This week I did it with a Challenger DK, we did 14-6. Not bad.

5865 achievement points... I'm getting close to the Chromaggus TOP 50.

Gurubashi Arena Grand Master is coming... one trinket missing to finish it !