Merry Christmas Wowcrafters

Merry Christmas fellow Wowcrafters !

Netcownt my behated warlock is now 85 and is halfway through Uldum and Twilight Highlands questing. I positively loved Uldum and the Egypt like stuff. Being an Egyptology freak, It just couldn't get any better, I can now be an archeologist nearly as famous as.. Harrison Jones !


On this topic, I also leveled the new secondary profession up to 100 and with it was able to go from level 84.5 to 85 (30K XP per fragment = yay!).



The rest of my chars are building up rest time for faster leveling in 2011.



Ok, have fun, and nothing like a little snow from a Swedish pal to cheer things up !

Slowly but surely

This week in Cataclysm has been peaceful. Netcownt's guild is/was full of horny 3-4 day 85 people, specially warlocks, so that immediately made me slow down, since I knew I would have no spot in any raids for the near future. Therefore I went at my own pace with the warlock and the other tanking/healing toons.

It has been very profitable to watch videos and learn the strategies, but for sure things never go perfect in the first tanking attempt for a new dungeon. Again, it became clear how much easier it is too keep aggro and generally dps with a DK than with a warrior tanking.
I tanked Throne of the Tides, Blackrock caverns and the Stonecore. The first two are easy, the last one is a bit more difficult, if you have dumb people that do not interrupt and if you do not select the best target first. After learning it, though, it became easy.
I miss healing an instance to check up on how are things in the holy side of life, but again, I've been having fun.

Guildwise, my beloved Arcadia guild, although a little more "vivificated", still misses some major characters coming back. Let's hope they will, sooner or later.
Today my Day-Time raiding guild that I hoped would be a replacement for Arcadia if things did not clear, went down the drain, so I'm now rather lonely on a level 4 guild ! I think i'll stay around and use the +5% reputation bonus for now.
Meanwhile, on Chromaggus, i'm back to my $home at Savory Deviate Delight.

First impressions of Cataclysm

Long story short, one week into Cataclysm, and it is looking great.

For sure, some effort was put in areas where high level players don't really go, except en passant. Such is the case of Darkshore and alike, which were heavily revamped due to the cataclysmic tsunami caused by Darkwing waking up. Flying in Azeroth is a long time wish, and specially Orgrimmar seems to have been 100% recreated, while Stormwind changed a bit in some areas, but essentially remained the same city.


What really looks great for me is Vash'jir. I did all the quests in this area with Netcownt and I'm now also doing them slowly with my other 6 chars (Mage, Rogue and Hunter are being left behind, the rest are trailing Netcownt, 4 of them dualboxing).

I still had no time to check up on the Goblin and Worgen starting areas, although in both cases, for me at least, a story link is missing that shows to level 80 players that killed Arthas, why are we going to interact more heavily with Goblins and Worgens now.


I'm now half way into Hyjal. The story background in Hyjal goes back to my beloved Warcraft adventures in the XXth century. Now it just develops a bit further.

Graphically, it couldnt be better. I'm still doing 50-60 fps, more detail, underwater movement, textures, etc, are stunning.

Questwise, it is also an improvement. We have much less optional quests, there is now a sense of duty, of chain questing that actually tries to achieve something. There are still those "kill 10 mobs", "grab 8 flowers", but there are also many quests where the player (this one is copied from LOTRO, by the way) impersonates the enemy (nagas), and some funny gnome adventures. Intermediate cinematics are also a good idea.

In terms of playability, I think it's too easy. Seeing hundreds of lvl 85 players after 1-2 days of the expansion being released is just ridiculous. I'm sure some of them farmed the same mobs over and over, and most quested without bothering to read one line, and are now gearing up in heroics. Ofc, each player is paying to play, and is free do to with his time whatever he pleases, and if he feels good by having 320+ gear level after 1 week of play, then be it.
Anyway, it is TOO easy. In LOTRO, in AION, in vanilla WoW, if you had more than one mobs on you, it was tough. If you had three, it was immensely challenging. In Cata, I go into Demo mode as a iLvl264 warlock and I can dispatch 5-8 mobs in 10-15 secs. I have more problems gathering them than killing them, although in some areas, respawn rates are so high you can simply stay on one spot for hours. It's probably that way that the first lvl 85 showed up, I'm sure.

I'm going slower, reading each quest, some times checking up on lore to see if it matches the RPG story outside of the computer game, and previous Warcraft games.

On Chromaggus, the PVP is..a nightmare. Alliance is outnumbered may be 5:1 or more, and horde are killing on sight with no remorse. Dualboxing plates should help, I thought, keeping them away. It doesn't. I cannot even get revenge, as when I try to, 5 of them fall on me in less than one breath. A nightmare indeed :) and it slows leveling a lot ! Oh well, it's fun too, yelling "filho da puta!" in my office :)

Crazy Cata

Alienation.

Millions of subscribers waiting for the moment when Cataclysm will start.

I'm too old for this :)

ICC 10 HC Sindragosa is no more

Today I joined my new guild, and a bunch of other warlocks, to kill Sindra HC.
We wiped a few times, courtesy of dc's, a few innocent mistakes, and rng.


But then, it all came together, and down she went, Sindra 10 in Heroic Mode.

That's all folks !

A couple of hours today in BG's and in instances, and the deed is done, my last two toons are now 80.

That makes it 10, one of each class, slowly leveled up to 80, during WOTLK, and having fun doing it.

I hope I will have more fun (and less hours wiping) in Cataclysm.

Shattering: The plus and the minus

A happy day and a sad day, today.

It's a happy day because I think.. I think I may have found a guild for me in Cata, to raid during the day. We raided today in a half guild half pug-mode, and we did Ruby Sanctum 10 (another reason to be happy) and Lich King 10. That's already a plus, because as I wrote before, I was stuck without RS10 as Arcadia downed it the week I was on holidays and we didn't go back in again. There's another countryman in the guild, which is a bonus. We'll have to see how it goes the next few weeks.

It's a happy day because there will be new graphic contents to see. New places to visit.

It's a sad day because the old World of Warcraft as we know it, will die tonight. Zul'Gurub, the most beautiful instance and the first one most raiders played, me included, 5 years ago, will die with it. Also with it, will die my hope of getting the Thekal tiger. Tomorrow we will have things like some weird tracks in Azshara, a fissure in the Barrens, and a new threat to deal with. I hope it's not too childish, /train style, I'm fed up with crap like that.

It's a sad day because the AQ40 chain quest will be partly disabled or changed.

It's a sad day because most decent persons I met during my ride have scattered through different servers, different guilds, and again and again I have to build a reputation with a new team, as I explore a scattered world.

In the last days I've been leveling up cooking to 350 for all my 10 chars. It's 100x easier this week with the Pilgrim cooking. The only annoying part is that cities are under attack all the time so the portals are intermitent. But tomorrow we won't have portals whatsoever, so I might as well finish it tonight !

Today, the 4xboss portals of the pre-Cata event were open, so I farmed a bit with my tanks for some free lvl 251 gear that may help me start tanking in Cata.



Entering in ICC again today reminded me how I am vomiting this place. I'm not sure I will enter it again. That was nearly 9 months, 3-5 times per week, 3.5 hours each time = over 500 hours inside ICC. That was *WAY* too much, now that I think of it. I remember Ripit leaving and /qguitting in the middle of a Sindra25... and I now understand how he felt. He couldn't simply be one more second inside that place. It was not polite what he did, but that's human behaviour.

My last two toons, Lonegrim and Patalogica are 77/78, and tomorrow we will have a reduction in the required XP, so I'll use it to my benefit and go up to 80 the next few days, and achieve what I did for TBC, ie, to level all 10 classes up to cap level.

So let's wait for the Shattering, and long live Deathwing !

Long live the King

During my slow and painful hunter road to 80, I decided to hunt rare pets.
Well, today I successfully tamed King Crush, the imba devilsaur from Sholazar Basin.
Next on the list are Loque Nahaq, Aotona and Gondria+Arcturis, the spectral spirits.
Come on Cataclys, let's get going...
I wonder if I should stack 4k justice points for my main while waiting.
My beloved Arcadia guild is now an undead guild, most ppl have left.. and DAMN!



As I'm writing this, I've spotted Gondria crawling in Zul'Drak, but the cat is lvl 77 and I'm 76 so.. guess what ? "Creature is too high level for you to tame."
Damn damn !

The End is Near

Azeroth will change soon. There are earthquakes all the time. In the last days elementals showed up raging all over the world. Not an elemental invasion like in previous days, but something is different.
A few quests showed up for players to act against doomsayers in Stormwind and Orgrimmar (and Goldshire and Razor Hill).

Meanwhile, I keep up on leveling my last 3 alts. Matadora finished today, a happy lvl 80. First I struggled a bit with dps with bad gear, but it's now kicking ass. Here are the last moments of leveling, courtesy of Youtube.

Check it out.

It's a kind of magic

A kind of mage-ic indeed ! I thought I would have an enormous pain to grab my 70 mage and spec it to play. Last time I tried, I was fire, but solo playing was using too much mana and I had no fun. I never did, and still refuse to play arcane. I think arcane mages are simply not fun, for those that want to play without much effort. All they do in raids is spam Arcane Explosion, Arcane Missiles, and that's about it. Blizzard should never allow easier specs to lap more difficult specs. Well, 4.0.1 arrived, and so last night I specced fire and went for the kill.

Oh My God !

I like it. I like it very much. Comparing with the rogue 78, where I barely can reach 2k dps, or my hunter which can only do those miseralble AoE shots, the mage 72 easily does +2.6k, amazing AoE, amazing crits and nukes. It's a whole different world, and much different from my frostmage leveling experience in TBC.
My firelord goes in with the Living Bomb opener, spread on each mob, followed by Flame Strike and Blastwave to avoid sudden visitors. There are triggered abilities, Fire Blast and a brutal Pyroblast, plus Scorch to provide the +5%crit and the main Fireball ability for single target. Dragon's Breath if aggro goes wrong. And the funniest, a warlock-envy, the Combustion is now a periodic doubling damage spell. That's nine NINE fire damage abilities. Combine that with Mage Armor when needed and we have ~100% mana all the time. Couldn't be better. I'm consistently doing 40-50% of the overall damage.

So I guess I'll have all 10 level 80 classes by December 6th, with little effort.
Long live heirlooms.

Hunting for pleasure

After a long long time, I decided to pickup my hunter, now that my rogue is on track to 80 (77 atm), and out of rest time.

I must say I never liked hunters as pve. I had good fun with him as pvp in Alterac in the old dayz (Knight Captain rank) shooting from far far away in those long AV nights. But besides that, I never took him to raids or instances.

Well, this time I decided to give it a go. And surprise, it worked well. Being a ranged is so much easier than meleeing as rogue, the target is clearly seen, aggroing gives us enough time for threat dropping or trapping, and with a clever BM spec I built (later on I checked that it's the pve spec most BM hunters are using, as expected since with 31 points per tree, there's not much difference, everyone specs the same...).

Well, my good old dwarf is now 73 and kicking ass, although tanks and DK's are very difficult to race dpswise.

I know most non-old-school hunters are whining all the time because they lost the Volley ability, and now have to rely on Multi-shot to AoE, loosing to all those DK, mages, etc that have multiple AoE abilities. Oh well, I say, learn to use Exlosive traps in conjunction with Multi-shots, and you get double AoE again, and with no focus loss. Ofc it's easier than setting an AoE point and just channel, like it was done with Volley. But then again, it was too easy, just like Rain of Fire is too easy for locks or Blizzard for mages.

Talking about mages, Patalogica is now the only class I'm having second, third, multiple thoughts to restart leveling (stuck at 71). Oh dear, am I really gonna do it ? Get a power leveler to do it... free of course. May be I can convince a neighbour teen to do it ! I'll pay in cheeseburgers !

Zang Tuum Tumb

How does a rogue work ? Just like that, zang tuum tumb, mob dead. After so much time, and since I've got nothing else to do, I restarted leveling my beloved rogyie from 73 up, in dungeons (where else?). My combat spec seems to work, although I miss AoE with no cooldowns. Still, Slash and Dash, Blade Furry, and Killing Spree are great stackers.

Oh well, tomorrow we have the 4.0 patch and I'll be able to check the new tanking specs for pala, druid, warrior and specially DK !

Boredom and gquit

In the last week, I started farming some Primal Lifes for the Darkmoon reputation also did some PUG battlegrounds, but quickly got bored. My boredom increased when I looked at the guild activity and logs and concluded nearly everyone is leaving or not showing up until Cataclysm.

So... what the hell am I doing in an empty guild, with nothing to do ?

I got Moonprince in to keep checking things and /gquit until Cataclysm.

Now at least I can join some place where I can talk to someone or listen to funny or idiot comments in chat.

I thought about joining a PVE guild, since I am so good geared and I didnt even had the chance to use my 6.1GS and do something with it (and still need LK25 and RS10). Problem is... I can't stand ICC anymore (neither can the wife, although I could join a day-raiding or after-hours raiding guild) and RS10 is not exactly a *must do*.

So now I'm looking for a PVP guild. I found two recruiting, just need to think a little which one to go to. Arena season is finished, new talents are coming, so probably in a few days everyone will want to test those in battlegrounds. So do I, I will again pwn in Demo mode !

In the meantime, I'm switching to LOTRO and DDO, where there are guildies online.

The good the bad and the worst

Yesterday I repeated the Ulduar 25 achievement run, this time focused on undyings toward "Champion of Ulduar" and more achievements. The good part is that I got 100 points more, plus the bonus of killing Algalon, the hard mode optional boss and an extra Supermassive achievement. The bad part is that I stupidly died on Mimiron because I ran clockwise on the Laser Barrage instead of counterclockwise. The worst part is that because of this I will be excluded from further undying runs. Crap. This is the way hardcore works. You make one mistake, you're out, even if you'be been running with this team for weeks in Naxx, EoE, Uld, Ony, always doing the right things and even watching the raid leader fucking up, like stepping on mines last week. Oh well, as we say in Portuguese, que se foda.

Now back to farming gold for my last Pristine Black Diamonds, I've turned exalted with the Steamwheedle cartel (no more Dire Maul for me) on time, as I had set the goal of 30 Sept. for that, but Shan'dralar still needs the last Librams delivered. Nearly insane (sort of, Darkmoon is far from over).

YAHOOHOO ! I'm over Nine Thousand !

A week has passed. The Brewfest event does not bring anything new. Anything at all ? No, something changed. After 5 days I was finally, after 3 years trying, able to get a BrewFAST mount! Not the Kodo, ok, but it's better than nothing.

I've been working on the Insane achievement, at my own place, slow and steady. I'm now revered with the Steemwheedle and honored with Shandralar, should be over at the end of September.

My PUG (kind of, it had ppl of the best guilds on my server) Ony10 and Toc10 were mostly sucessful, and I got some more achievements. TOC 10 was specially fun, because we did all the achievements for normal mode, namely the Anub'arak one, which involves killing 40 scarabs in quick succession, a hard achievement, if ppl don't know what to do. Because I was successful too, I got an invite for the Ulduar 25 run this weekend.













And I've just finished doing it ! During that, we did nearly 200 achievement points, I was able to finally kill Yogg Saron and to see Algalon in action ( we didn't kill it because the PUG had too many idiots, responsible for e.g. not reaching the Insanity achievement because one got MC at 1%, etc).



And the best part of all, Feat of Strength "It's over Nine Thousand".



Shame that I'm getting this done with no guildies.

Now my last goal for this expansion is "Halion down", but for that I will have to leave the guild for some days, or pay someone handsomely, since the guild killed it without me.

Last but not least, talents for Cataclysm are coming down soon and... I didn't like what I saw. They basically renewed warlocks in such a way that we have to learn everything again. Crap !

Back to classics

I'm having a good time with classical music again. Back to piano, back to the promenade festivals, etc. What does this relate to WoW ? I'll tell you.
I'm also back to classics, Dire Maul, LBRS, Zul'Gurub.

Part of it is because of Blizzard, which stupidly decided to cancel the Zul'Gurub raid and open the area to low level questing (with another idiotic sequence of killing X trolls, gather Y boxes, scout Z goblins, etc, to get a mediocre 50 silver and some greenish bad looking legs). So I'm back to ZG to try and get my tiger before the expansion kicks in. Good thing old Broodlord Mandokir gave me his dyno !

I hope the expansion arrival will be better for me than with WOTLK, when nearly everyone in my ex-guild Portucale started rushing towards 80 to raid Naxx while I was still leveling and sightseeing (when ppl start delivering quests without even reading them, and competing to see who's gaining more XP per hour, it tells me I'm n the wrong spot) so I was left behind and simply quit and left the server. Ok it was not just that, there was an idiot called Brujah leading my priest class, and we weren't exactly *friends*. Oh well, he left Portucale too.

I'm sad that my guild wasn't able to stand together and get LK HC down in ICC10 (and Ulduar) with the corresponding "Glory of the Raider" achievements and mounts. We did 50% of the jobs and then... nothing. What's even worse, I did not kill Halion in RS10 and with every idiot and his mother requesting the achievement to get an invite, it isn't looking any good. People simply stopped accepting raids and logging off, so here I am, going for an Insane achievement and .. joining pugs. Ok, one PUG. The leader created the raid invitation on the forum, clearly stating what we do in terms of achievements and that's it. So tonight, we shall do Ony10 and TOC10. As he seems to be from a hardcore guild, so it should work. Hopefully. /pray.

Insanewise, no more pickpocketing for me, I was able to transfer some boxes and farm LBRS for the rest, so I'm now EXALTED with Ravenholdt.

Shandra'lar and Steemwheedle cartel are going good, still lacking about 30 librams and pristine black diamonds. I have a little trick for those, worked once already, but I'll tell it only in the end. Spent too many argent crusade seals on mounts, and now I miss I hadn't. An e-mail every 4 hours is great to avoid trashing librams because they are unique. I parked my alts near the entrance but still it's hard sometimes. Now my engineeering pala with MOLL-E is in Silvermoon too, it will help.

Darkmoon Faire is the hardest, halfway to honored now, but farming herbs is a pain in Azeroth without a flying mount, and the low level card decks give little reputation (need 14 low decks to match an epic deck), so I will probably farm Outlands (Zangarmarsh and Terokkar seem like good spots) for the TBC decks.

Insanely hard

Some months ago, out of boredom in SDD, I ran Matadora through LBRS and got a few hundred boxes waiting for the day I would start the Insane achievement. Well, since I have time now, and as we are stalled in raids (kind of), I decided to give it a go, since I wanted to level inscription for Tarithel anyway, the only profession I missed.

So, I restarted reading what I missed and .. I started it.

- Bloodsail Buccaneers up to Honored, that was easy, 2 evenings in Booty bay and I got myself hated by all the Steamweedle cartel factions. Now I know how stupid I would have been for going 40 exalted using those. I went up to revered with all 4, and now I'm fully -36K hated ! But this time I will not kill thousands of pirates to get myself exalted. No, I will go to Dire Maul because I have to. By doing all this goblin killing in Booty Bay I got the nice Admiral hat and the Bloodsail Admiral title. I'm now officially a pirate, Yarr !

- Ravenholdt up to exalted. This one was easy too. I spent a few hours in Hillsbrad Foothills, killing Syndicate adepts, and I got revered. The missing 21K rep will be given by my rogue, which has a little problem: Matadora is on Chromaggus, a different server ! So packing is a problem, I will need all the inventory space for the boxes for more than 1 char. That's not too bad (it is, in terms of $$$ I have to pay Blizz, ofc LOL), I will also have to transfer Moonprince, my beloved engineer, because I need MOLL-E for the mailbox near Netcownt. I tested it on Chromaggus, and luckily, I can logout the engineer, but the mailbox remains in place for 10 mins, so there's enough time for Netcownt to use it and grab a lot of boxes from the mail... cooldown is 2 hours, no worries.

- Steamwheedle up to exalted. As I said, I will go for Dire Maul for this, probably 100 times, until Cataclysm starts, so I have a litle 3 months. OMG ! Once or twice per day, hopefully, will be enough for all 4 factions ie, Booty Bay, Ratchet, Everlook, Gadgetzan. I need (?) 36000 + 3000 + 3000 + 6000 + 12000 + 21000 = 81000.

- Shen'dralar up to exalted. This is the "libram part", also in Dire Maul. I have a few abominations from my Baron runs, but my problem are really the damn "Pristine Black Diamonds". I need 84 of those and they go by 300-500g each on AH!!! I was able to grab 8 from the LOM deceased gbank (I hope the Lords will forgive me for this little theft, I will try to replace it with something useful for anyone that levels chars in Cataclysm, may be Firak, Corleth or Raidan will return and can use some leveling help).

- Darkmoon Faire up to exalted. God knows I tried, since Vanilla WoW, to get exalted. But the tickets were a pain in the ass method, and so I stopped halfway to friendly. This time it will be different, I know I can get up to halfway honored by delivering Thorium widgets (more help from my engineer Moonprince) and then switch to the "Deck" delivery mode. Decks decks, I need cards for that. Again, I got a few from the LOM gbank, and those will help me to make at most 1 Deck (LOL!). Now I need 92 instead of 93...Nah, because Inscription comes into the scenery, since an inscripter can create low level cards/decks. They will give a lot less reputation than the epic cards/decks, but they are also easy to make. So today, I leveled Tarithel inscription above 110 and I started making green decks like mad (yay, 3 !) too check how easy it is.

All in all, I will use 4 characters in 2 servers, checking up to 4 AH and hopefully paying only for the rarest mats, trading gold for effort. I will use my own professions: herbalism, inscription, engineering and one specific class, rogue, for lock picking.

Elune be praised !

All ready ? set ? Go !

Heroic mood

In the last days, things have been pretty busy both in RL and in WoW life.

Lets stick to WoW: Our guild isn't zombie anymore. With people returning from holidays and such, we were gathered to push some heroic/achievement modes towards "Glory of the Icecrownd Raider" and "Glory of the Ulduar Radier", in ICC10 and ofc in Ulduar. Three hurras for that !

For ICC10, we managed to dispatch a few of them, so only 5 are left to get us all a Bloodbathed Frosthood Vanquisher flying mount. We still didnt kill Sindragosa HC 10, best we did was 5%, and with a bit + dps in P3 we would have done it. Hopefully it will be tonight.

As to Ulduar 10, it's been a long long time (more than 1 year) since I had been there for real, but luckily we went in with our leaders knowing the fights, so we pwned and did 8 achievements, one per boss. 5 remain, probably the hardest, including Firefighter and One Light in the Darkness. May be we have enough time and pwn it for the Rusted Proto-Drake.

Imba druid !

Mr. Rothron the Wise, the lonely druid from the Tower of the Moon in the lands of Midnight is now level 80 !

To celebrate, I started the Swift Flight Form quest chain, since I still was flying sloowly. No more, today I finished it by soloing Anzu, and I can now fly at a respectable speed.



Heroicwise, I was able to start doing the old heroics easily, and I now equipped my first 2xT9, courtesy of those daily triumphs I saved.
Up to now it has been a breeze. Approaching 30K hp.

Massively frustrating

Arcadia stopped raiding until Catalysm !

I read on the forums but I couldn't believe it. Today I reactivated my account in time for raiding hoping for the best but confirmed the worst.

So much effort for 11/12. That's Ulduar's SDD frustration revisited, as we stopped short of killing Yogg.

What now ? I will have to find a decent PUG/partial guild run that knows what they are doing to get Lich King and Ruby Sanctum down. What are the odds of that ? <10% every week, versus a huge time effort I'll have to invest.

Today, the guild looked a zombie one, most people happily leveling alts.

Oh well, it's nice while it lasted, a lot of mature raiders having fun. It's pity it *un*finished too early.

Now I have the chance of going achievement hunting in other directions, like PVP.

Another way is of course to start creating my own raids, something I wanted to avoid because of my stress dealing with persistent failing people, in real life or otherwise. I admire raid leaders *a lot* for that. It's an impressively patient task.

Ah well, have to sleep over it, or as Helen Cooper said in Kissing Jessica Stein, "don't decide right now, just let it marinate for a while".



Meanwhile lets get my imba 79 druid tank to 80 until the end of this week

Holidays

Why has there been no updates recently ? Because I'm spending some time AFK, on holidays, enjoying the hot southern summer that has been raging hot around here. In my last last raids, we tried Sindragosa 10 HC and had her down to ~10%. We also spent one night in Ruby Sanctum 15, killing trash, and getting tactics right for the kill. I kind of managed the tactics fine, and that reflected well in my dps and most important, my survivability during mini-bosses and the boss itself. There's not much to be learned about the boss on RS25 (~same as on RS10, and the minibosses and trash pulls actually seem way harder than the boss itself !).
- Run from the sides middle. Stay together and nuke.
- If getting targetted by the debuff , run away for a quick dispel.
- If incoming meteor, strafe right/left, and then move through the boss legs to the otherside.
- Rinse and repeat until P2 -> portal.
- Nuke from the side, watch out for debuff for a quick run away + dispel.
- Keep a very strict watch on the orbs and timers. Set a teleport, circle around the the boss while it is rotating, always near the tail. If in danger, teleport.

With my bad luck, ppl will pwn through the boss this week, when I'm not there :(

Oh well, next week I'll return with enhanced will for a kill, LK25 and RS25 are waiting for us.

And Herr Dr. Putricide is down too

Easy peasy, after the debuff rotation started working, we downed it. Prio job is to smash the oozes in P2 asap to get Putri fast to P3. Adding the /tar macro for the volatile (in the middle of the maelstrom, sometimes there were a few secs delay until I switched the targets as I had to check who had the debuff, checking wether it was my turn to go and get it and counting the seconds, telling ppl no longer with it to get the hell away fast, mastering goo, etc) helped a lot Immediate target ftw.

We also tried Sindra Heroic, and it's easy: It's the same fight, with 0 chance for mistakes. You can't miss hiding behind the frosted persons, or you die. You can't kill the frosted ones too soon or you'll die. You can't miss getting away during the frost pull, or you die. My teleport helps a lot. Last but not least, The debuff we get during the fight (forgot the name) becomes an AoE when it expires, so get away from everyone while you have it.

So it's now 10/12 ICC10 HC. It was a good raid, good raiders idd.


Talking about good raiders, yesterday I talked with a RL friend of mine that has been doing 10-men raids, forgetting about 25-runs. He's been playing WoW and we know each other for 10 years, since the pre-WoW days. Actually he started playing WoW before me, during the beta, I think, and he tried to convince me not to play, knowing the addiction. After seeing what he achieved, I envy him. Got Bane of the Lich King last week, and of course all the achievements for 10-raiding since Naxx. Getting 25 focused persons that can progress over a few months is so so so so much harder. He was going for RS10 heroic tonight, easy when you got 10 dedicated players... xuif ;(

Oh well, my time will come.

Another Step Up: Heroic Valithria down

Last night, tired that I was, I contributed to another heroic downage. This time was Valithria Dreamwalker, healed to 100% with our 2 holadins, the main healer doing 30K HPS !
I wasn't so bad either, went flat out during the whole fight, tendinitis forgotten for 5 minutes (ouch it hurts so bad sometimes I can't type properly) while smashing those adds.

Finally we tried Putricide Heroic, and took a few wipes (one I offered by getting too close to the boss while checking the best positions, shame on me) to figure a good strategy, which we will probably follow, ie, rotation and a safe spot where the unbound plagued person stays while shouting "plagued".

Last but not least, I checked the rankings today and... RANK 11 in Marrowgar normal ICC 10 ! I checked a few locks above me, just to sample their gear and... 1 had 8 heroic items, another had 5 heroic items.
But that was not all, ranked 133 in Heroic Blood-Queen, on a fight I was not bitten first, moved across the room to get bitten by a fellow mage, got 2 darkfallens and 1 swarming shadows. Everyone did the job perfectly, so it was a 1-shot kill.

Another 80 on a heroic weekend

Minutes ago I finished an easy ride to 80 tanking with my beloved DK Shareth the Heartstealer. It's fun, but it's a bit too easy. Blizzard wanted DK's to feel overpowered. Well they do. There's no way I can pull 4-6 mobs the same level as me and end up with 100% health like I do soloing. Paladins come the closest in terms of mitigation and health recovery, while warriors.. well.



To complete a nice weekend, last night I went back to ICC10 with the guild, after having done only that PUG HC run where I went 6/12 HC some time ago. Last night I went up the ladders to 8/12 ICC10 HC. Saurfang Heroic was a breeze with the dps pulsing in our veins. And then... Blood Princes Heroic with me collecting orbs again ! We tried a couple of times to get the hang of it, then we got one unlucky try (2 orbs in the back at the start => move to catch them and freeze due to the debuff, followed by Empowered Keleseth immediately after start and then an empowered vortex on my feet. Can't get any worse) and then it came down smoothly (kind of).

I got an heroic offhand, replacing my old ICC10 one. Another guildie won the bet but was kind enough to pass it. I owe him one. Thanxie !

Now only need one vanquisher's mark to finish my 4xT10 sanctified set.

Putricide heroic is next. Unbound plague incoming, omg ! Soulstoning a dead-person-to-be seems a possible tactic for P3. Let's see how it goes.

Wee I got ranked !

Didn't notice it until our master reported on forums, but seems like I got ranked in worldoflogs on our last Blood Queen Normal 25 fight, and I found out I had already been ranked before in ICC10.



That's nothing you say, because... :)

Arguments:
1 - The top players are now doing heroics. But.. (rebuttal) there are also a *LOT* of ranked above me using heroic 25 gear, while the best I have is 1 ICC10HC item, the rest is ICC25 or ICC10 gear. So that evens it.
2- Latest reports make use of the 25% damage buff, while earlier reports had a lesser or no buff. (rebuttal) I just checked and e.g. from the TOP 20 reports of this fight, only 1 was from March, the other 19 are from June or July. Enuf said.

Last but not least.. I'm still with the f*cking tendinitis that seems to be getting worse so mouse clicking was not perfect, and the fight was not perfect as:
- I did *NOT* get bitten first, I got bitten second. Still ended up on top (eheh).
- I had two pacts of the darkfallen => move to middle, wait, teleport back.
- I moved twice to melee (just in case they forgot, although both are top players)

Btw the best thing I did a few months ago was disabling recount during fights. DPS racing while watching the meters isn't good. It's much more fun to end the fight and watch the dps meter show up suddenly with the results. Actually, that's one thing Blizz should force these kind of addons to. E.g. encrypt combat log numbers with a magic key that is only provided when the fight ends or when the player dies, so only after that the client can display the numbers. Or simply cache them but do not show them. That would be a nice way for ppl to focus, I'm pretty sure about 25% of wipes are caused by ppl not paying attention to their surroundings because they are glued to the dps meters.

All in all, it's nice to be as part of the 200 best of the world (of logs), considering all the pro guilds use it.

I wonder how age filtering would rank me. I'm probably the only 40+ yo kicking youngsters asses LOL !
All that comes with a price = tendinitis. Blame bike riding, yeah. Fingers hurt, both hands hurt, even my bloody elbow hurts. OUCH! Ice time!

Of RS and AVR and warlocks and tendinitis

Yesterday was the day of Ruby Sanctum, a preview for the incoming Black Dragonflight fights. No I didn't set foot inside it yet.

Saw a fight in video, it seems easy and a great fight to use teleporting !
P1 - Watchout for hellfire, run away and then stay out of the way of flames.
- Watchout for debuff, run away and shout for dispel.
P2 - Watchout for orbs, semi-circle around following one, avoid crossing the orbs link (beam=death)
- Watchout for debuff, run away and shout for dispel.
P3 - Same as P1 (for ranged), tune dps for 50% corporeality.

It was also the day when AVR-E was blocked [btw, DISABLE it. I didn't and as result my FPS dropped a lot, because of the amount of errors/second it generates. Costed me a few fights with 10 FPS until I found out], meaning circles on the floor helping during fights are gone. Personally, the one fight where it helped me a bit maximizing dps time was Putricide, because one would know "exactly" where to stand not to get goo'ed. Tonight I tried without it and still dps'ed quite easily, on top, I think.

That brings me to a nice topic, "warlocks of my realm". I don't really know what's going on, but it's weird to see that whatever warlock comes to my guild, they stay for a bit, and then they change class (ok, one did it to help the guild healing so it's an exception), or 99% of the time, they leave, usually after 1-2 raids with us. Some of them are good players. But it is funny to see that I outperform them almost always, irrespective of their spec or gear level. I wonder if it's me that's scaring them away. Think I'm gonna have to slack a bit when they show up !!! With my tendinitis getting worse, I might as well have to.

I noticed it first when opening water bottles. Then it got worse, and affected my bike riding, and now the usage of knifes and important stuff like writing and ..driving!! The main finger (mouse left-clicker) is the sick one,though the pain comes up to my elbow sometimes, so I'm pretty sure 20 years of furious clicking are the cause. Anyway, I'm gonna have to deal with it pretty soon. Scary :(

Lich King 25 back and forth

Mixed feelings on this week of tries. We are now going for the 30th try, and 30 tries later, one can conclude something.

It is not easy !

Best try in two days was around 55%, but:
- 80% of the tries we ended up at 65%, meaning between the 1st and 2nd defile in P2.
- all tries but two we had at least one dead person by the 1st val'kyrs.

P1 is easy, and as long as ppl have no lag or are not oblivious (lacking active conscious knowledge or awareness!) to what they are doing, it's smooth.
- Sometimes the raid has to stop dps on Arthas around 72% and some ppl continue to do it.
- Sometimes ppl want to start dps the second the tank gets aggro, and die.
- Dps is OK, specially with the pala tank we had yesterday, my threat was simply HALF of what I usually get, which allows me to do a bit more, specially on the Raging Spirits. I knew there was space for improvement for threat generation.

Transition phase: Easy part as long as:
- the melee don't dps the second the Raging Spirit pops up. Some of them do, and die.
- the ranged run to the melee to drop the spawning Raging Spirit.
- Dps wise, it seems ok, we always kill 2 spirits and start pwning the 3rd one. We made an improvement, by bringing the Spirit to the LK in P2, so melee can kill it too before the Val'kyrs. It worked. Spirit is 0%-10% when they arrive.

P2: Val'kyr Nightmare.
- raiders have to stack in line behind LK, not 1 yard but 3-5 yards, so that all 3 Val'kyrs run in the same direction. We failed there, so they fly in different directions, making it worse for melee. Result is, 1-3 falling down.
- Defile: first defile is easy, as long as raiders move in the opposite direction the defiled person goes. Some ppl don't do that, they wait for the defiled to run away, and sometimes it's not enough. I learned to move 1-2 secs before it sets the target so I'm already dpsing the val'kyrs in my stationary position when defile shows up. Most times I don't have to move anymore. And that's the reason why I get a good damage on them, 2nd highest both days.
- second defile occurs in the same seconds of the 2nd set of val'kyrs, and that's the pain. All times, when the second defile is a melee, we get a black hole in the middle, and that's game over. So ppl must know the timings for this second set and spread the same second the val'kyrs pickup their targets. 2 secs later, it's too late.
- last but not least, Infest ! Infest kills 3-5 ppl every time we finish killing the first set of val'kyrs. Reason is possibly the lack of a discipline priest and may be a resto shaman for the chain healing.



By the way, what is wrong in this picture ???

All in all not so bad, but raid composition is affecting the progress below 65%, because of the number of dead ppl after the first set of val'kyrs, and that's what's stalling us.

Let's see how it goes tonight.

The Scepter ! I got the Scepter !

After three years or so, tonight I completed the AQ40 quest chain.

Got a bargain on the last Elementium Ores, delivered all the items I've been saving to Narain, who sent me on a fish hunt to Azshara, to kill the great Shark.



Inside him I found the last shard, that I delivered to Anachronos. And so Anachronos gave me the Scepter of the Shifting Sands, the magnificent scepter the mighty heroes of old used to bang a gong and open the gates of Ahn'Qiraj.

Double trinketing !

Sindragosa 25 down today ! Costed us a few tries under 9%, one at 2% and then, with the right raid setup, it came down with time to spare.

Funny to see that a few so *called* hardcore(r) raiders left our guild to go for heroic modes and ... their progress is just like ours, Sindra down. Ha !

And guess what, a trinket dropped. I forgot to check what loot it dropped, but I had the idea there was no other caster trinket in ICC25. But suddenly... there was. And it was just like [Muradin's Spyglass].

And so I thought in the following 10 secs: "I have killed Gunship and Rotface 24 times and only got 1 trinket on the 24th run... am I going to wait another 24 runs for my luck on Gunship, or am I going to use my dkp ?" So I used it. Some people may have been sad about it, but ffs, I had a lvl 200 trinket, the BiS for lvl 200, but still a lvl 200.

SO I'm now the proud owner of a [Phylactery of the Nameless Lich].

We tried LK but ppl had to go so we're saving it for next week.

I smell blood.

PS: Fucking addon updates just before raid costed me an unforced error. After update, DBM was disabled, LifeTapper was wrongly installed, so on the first iceblocking DBM didn't notify me and .. I blocked 10 ppl or so. Argh, humiliating. Never DO THAT AGAIN !

Slacker trinketing

GZ me ! After 3 months of trying, I finally got my first ICC 25 trinket, the 3rd drop for the guild, the imba [Dislodged Foreign Object].

The funny thing is that I had run a few simcraft tries, and guess what:

It is going to replace my lvl 232 [Nevermelting Ice Crystal], not my lvl 200 Abyssal Rune. The reason, of course, is that I get more boost using the Abyssal rune, loosing some OnUse cooldown of 3 mins but gaining less threat during fight starts (not so many crits), providing a way to engage full dps faster.

Simcraft now says I should be able to pull over 10K dps on a t&s with nearly ideal class distribution, and indeed I did, >10K on Festergut staying outside and again >10K on Putricide (not expected tbh :). WEEEEEEE !

Funny how GS tells so little about effective equipping. Well, GS tells so little about everything.

The best part is that yesterday, finally we got serious raid going. Ppl were focused and knew what to do, so we pwned 9 bosses in ICC25 with lots of pausing times. This means we have a real shot of downing Sindragosa 25 tonight if the raid setup stays the same. Fingers crossed.

I'm on target to get my three final items from ICC25:
- A conqueror emblem to upgrade my shoulders.
- The offhand from Blood Princes.. or the one from Deathwhisper 10HC.
- And the bloody damn Gunship ICC10 trinket that never dropped during 4 months of guild runs. I've been slacking, skipping most weeks when I have to PUG it due to busy weekends (being a father is a full time job..)

A happy lock !

Guess who came for tea ?

Heroic mode made easy

Yesterday I got some spare time, so I decided to try and pug ICC10, for the first time ever. Joined the raid browser and waited.
I got an offer for a guild alt run where they would do some Heroic Modes.
That was weird, but I accepted and joined.

And Heroic Modes we did, 6 of them, and missed Saurfang by an incredible bad luck, as the healer got a double debuff (didnt even know it could happen) with 300K to go !

- Down went HC Marrowgar, staying in the middle while the two tanks spread.
- Down went HC Deathwhisper, with no back tactic, just staying in the middle and focusing on the adds (only 2 casters, me and a Shadowpriest, but we did fine). In P2, I got no aggro problems at all, although I was pushing.
- Down went HC Gunship, too easy to be told. And again, my #$@%& trinket dropped...NOT !
- HC Saurfang, we tried but skipped it after the 300K wipe, ppl were rushing to bed.
Down went HC Rotface, the only difference I noticed is that I had to stay in range to dps and seemed to get frozen every now and then.
- Down went HC Festergut. They pulled the boss to the opposite side of the balcony where Putricide is sending the Goo. Works much better than middle positioning. I got it once :( but we managed fine.
- Down went HC BQ. I was the last to be bitten and had an incredible bad luck, my keyboard got stuck in auto-run when the fight started for about 2 mins... god knows what silly bug happened, so I had to keep pushing the back move button to stop my warlock in place....even so I did pretty good dps. Got two swarming shadows and two Darkfallen, couldn't get worse !
We reached the LK but by then it was too late, so we did two tries, going into the last phase but never got to 10%.

Wow !

The best part is that I wasn't pushing 100%, since I never know what kind of tanks and positions these other guilds have and it was a bit hard to have to learn it in the first 5 secs of the fight, but I did a pretty good dps, staying in the top 3 all the time. The leader was speaking english at 200% with that damn accent they have in the countryside or whatever that was, it was hard to understand at times, but I managed it. "shummashone" = "summon a stone".

Guild name is Respect. They gained mine too.

A new 80 is born

Luxor the Moonprince, my beloved paladin, has tanked and tanked and reached 80 very easily. I'm now liking him much more, although still thinking that mana is more of an issue than rage was for warrior. But anyway, once you start to deal with it, it becomes a blast.

Time to level his engineering a bit more and then park him in Stormwind for Cataclysm.

Morkin/Alfragitax is level 80 !

My tank has slowly but surely reached 80, I just leveled on a high note inside Utgarde Pinnacle on the last boss.

Now it's time to level my professions to 450 and park him for Cataclysm, where I will surely tank with him up to 85 or whatever level cap shows up.

Fraps working fine

A few years ago I registered Fraps, but I never really used it, as my machine seemed too slow to play a game and record live videos.

Well, times have changed and the latest fraps ony my PC handles ICC10 video recording just fine.

So last night I tried to record a few fights. This is me acting as the balloon man in the Blood Princes fight. Pretty funny. Not too many keys pressed LOL. Shadow Ward, Curse of Elements, Curse of Agony Rank 1 on orbs and spam Searing Pain (Improved) on Keleseth. Ok, and a deathcoil every now and then and a few dots on the other bosses when you have free time :)





Yes, yes, yes, Iknow my UI is archaic, but I don't really give a damn about UIs.
They must be minimalist, simple to use, have a lot of screen space free of gadgets, and easily changeable.

There are a few addons I have to fix, and will be working on it, one of them being DBM UI gadgets positioning, and the other is a threat warning that works 100%.

Omen seems to stop warning me sometimes, no idea why, and that shit last night caused me to aggro at 25% Rotface and because of the distance to targe, I got melee hit with 45K and bye bye. I remember I saw the aggro near 100% before an explosion, but tbh, after the explosion, I didnt even consider that I would have to bother with it. Somehow my brain forgot to check it and .. Omen didnt warn me.

Now you ask... wait, but on Rotface, it's impossible to get aggro, since the tank will be 100% on Rotface while you have to go deliver Oozes, and have to move from the middle due to explosions and get back. That's true, but that only works if the tank does enough TPS and does not slack. I had even used a soulshatter since we usually enable heroism in the first seconds, which is really painful for me. I mean, I even specced specially for this with -20% threat in Destructive Reach, but even so, I aggro.

But Rotface is not a dps race, so it's your fault, and that's it. That's true. When a dpser dies, it's his or her fault.

Anyway, I saw the Damage Taken meter and... omg I nearly took 0 damage until the melee hit. So that was all in all a not so bad job.

Paladin tanking

Today I tried something new. I've always been using my paladin as holy or retribution, or hybrid, and, being my 2nd oldest toon, it's a shame I've never tanked with him. Besides, he's named the Moonprince, and Luxor the Moonprince, Warlord of the Free, was the Commander of the Free Army, back in 1985, so he must tank !

Well, now he has. I've just completed my first instance tanking at 76, Utgarde Keep (one has to go slow lol).

It's funny, all those spells I never used, like Shield and Hammer of Righteousness, Holy Shield, Divine Plea, and of course, the milk and cream of it all, Avenger's Shield and Righteous Defense, become now handy.

The +defense armour was courtesy of Morkin, his Midnight son(weird..), my absolutely first toon, which is also tanking at 78.

So, after get the hang of it, I'll be able to dual tank these toons frequently in daily dungeons up to 80, making enough money for the mounts, and then probably park them for Cataclysm.

Speaking of which, I checked my /played for Morkin (21) and Moonprince (44).

Naxxramas revisited

Last night I had 2 hours to try and get the Undying achievement. It's been one year since I last went there.
We cleared 2 quarters and 3rd until Thaddius in 1 hour or so...and then the damn mini-bosses were tanked too far from the coils and killed a few. Gaaah, and I had warned to the leader about it.
Got 40 achiev. points while doing the speed-run, and it was fun and unstressed.

Blood-Queen nightmares

This week of raiding, we purposefully set sail for Blood-Queen Lana'thel on ICC25.

We have a few fresh raiders (I wonder how ppl keep entering and leaving guilds at such a high rate, it seems impossible, even on high populated server, to go on raid with 100% familiar faces, there's always 2-3-4 new players every raid.

Well, that usually leads to failure, as we never know what kind of raiders we are getting.

And failure it was. 2 days later, 16 tries later, Lana'thel is stil up. Now that's morale demolishing!

The beast has 59,4M HP. Our best try was 55,6M, we had a few about 55K.
That's 6.3% left. Dps was 167K, so that was less than 22 seconds off the hook, as the dps in the end is highest with everyone bitten.

Causes ? A lot of'em. Consequences: death or mind-control, meaning less dps, meaning failure.

In times like this I like to hail the Guild Master. It needs a lot of patience for an adult to lead a gaming raid to have fun (and progress), and to spend hours watching ppl doing the same mistakes, having to cope with the more excited ppl, with the slackers, with those that are clueless, keep pushing, keep increasing the morale and staying cool. But boy, it must be hard, wanting to yell "f*cking afker get over here now" or "f*cking move, get to the middle" !

Tbh, Blizzard has a role in this crap. The single-slacker non forgiving mechanics, the lag spike non-forgiving mechanics, the trash killing and respawning (we killed trash 3 times), time spent waiting for AFK or D/C (the more ppl in raid the higher the odds of someone's RL or equipment getting f*cked) and generally, the problem that, after 2 hours of doing the same thing over and over, ppl start getting tired ( I know I do ), stressed and then fun goes out the window, replaced by anger against failing players, and in general, loss of focus. I wonder if LOTRO raids are the same.


A few personal tips I'm writing for myself for max awareness + might post on the guild forum for this fight.


1 - First, you should remember what names are in the raid and their roles, if they are melee or ranged, and try to remember their positions in the battlefield during tries. Yep, it's hard with new players every week, and ofc, for the new players.

2 - If you get Swarming Shadows, don't go blind dpsing and stay still for 5 secs!, start moving to the side, and keep moving until it wears off. It drops PURPLE stuff of the floor. *NEVER* run through the middle. That's *NEVER*.

3 - If you get Pact of the DarkFallen, run *IMMEDIATELY* to the *MIDDLE* (forget about finishing that 2sec cast), join the other 2 players and.... *WAIT* until it wears off. Do not just go there, gather and get back. Higher lag becomes a problem here, because 3 persons will keep moving around, and the debuff takes time to wear off.

4- If you haven't been bitten yet, *YOU* have to move. *DONT* wait for the person that is going to bite you to go to you, that's double-DPS loss for him => 60K+ dmg loss.

4.1 - If you haven't been bitten yet, and if it helps you getting to the target (you got whispered) that's going to bite you (use CTRA or GRID or..), use follow. Press F, taking care not to cross the middle of the room (darkfallen might go up), keep dpsing and wait for him to become a vampire and bite you, then return to your place . Ranged are easier to spot, but might be out of range (10-12y?) for follow. There's also a DBM mark on the players.

4.2- You can whisper your target when you are near him, warning him, with /script SendChatMessage("I'm right beside you. It's bite time! ", "WHISPER", nil, UnitName("target")); .It might help melee to know the ranged has arrived. Melee is dpsing the boss with their back to the center, so you get to him stay right beside him, dpsing too, until you get the bite (Essence of Blood Queen buff)


5 - If you are biting, wait for the person that is going to bite you to go to you. But act wisely if you can move to him too because he's not coming, or you're already a vampire, just go or bite someone else. At all costs, do *NOT* become MC'ed. Communicate if needed.

5.1- If you are biting, *DO TAKE NOTICE* of who you are going to bite, because that person is going to loose time going to you and back, so if you bite someone else just because it's easier for you, you are messing up his dps => 30K+ dmg loss).

6 - During air phase, it's survivability mode: Use the healthstone during air phase 2 to keep alive, heal yourself if not a healer, mitigate shadow dmg and stay within a /range 6 no-players area until the Bloodbolt whirl is finished (6 secs, boss sends 3 blood bolts, one every 2 secs).

6.1- If the time to get bitten is during air phase, go into survivability mode. Check your biting target and when it's over proceed. Watchout if he has already bitten someone else(rchat may help). This is the hardest part for me. Move too soon and you'll friendly fire others. Move too late and the biter is in trouble.

6.2- If the time for *YOU* to bite is during air phase, go into survivability mode. Then, target your target and proceed or it you're already in vampire mode and close to the 15sec? timer, bite whoever is near you, dpser if possible, or anyone, just bite anyone but do *NOT* get MC'ed.

7- Have dmg pots handy and use them when told.



My problems:
- I died early once, as a result of going to get bitten by a melee and at the same time of getting bitten (12K damage/bite btw), I was hit with path of the darkfallen from two persons in melee range (3K x 2) 3 times (both were may be too slow to get to middle), so I got 3x2x3+12=30K = death. May be I could have been a tad faster getting back to avoid the last dmg tick but there's so much you can click, as you should only teleport back when you are sure you have been bitten.
- Once I wanted to be bitten by a melee during the Bloodbolts, and I pressed F too fast to go to him, as whisper had come many seconds ago, so we was probably near his vampire time, but I friendly fired others, as he was also close to others. Crap move. Must find a way to fix this: graphically detect when the whirl ends, check if the 6 seconds are over... then move to him. What if it's too late for him ? He'll have to manage and bite someone else. Anyhow, controlling this kind of bite seems to be the worst part of the fight.


All in all, it was fun until half way, but later it got annoying.

Rivendell beats Darnassus ?

One thing I like about MMORPGs is to be able to visit all the graphic detailed places.

Last night I walked around Rivendell.

DKP burning and LOTRO

Yesterday I was hoping to get a second sanctified item on Saurfang 25 to enhance my Tier 10, as I have some DKP to spend.

It dropped, only me and a fellow priest seemed to need it.
But, some other ppl started bidding on it, and in the end, both me and the priest
passed and someone who was bidding only to "burn dkp", so he said in rchat, got it.

And this exactly the kind of crap that pisses me off *the most*.

If you play for fun, you, as you say in portuguese, "give the liter" to raid, week after week, with effort and dedication, sacrificing family quality time for a little progress and fun, and hope to get some loot in betweeen to make things easier, and get this kind of attitude from raiders that should be happy for others getting loot, and instead, bid, only to try to fuck someone else's time and effort...

Well, he got fucked up instead, and as to myself... it makes me think if my dedication and effort is worth it.

On the opposite side, LOTRO, there's an welcoming back week, so I took the time to pay for a lifetime membership.

That's it, no more monthly payments, just login and have fun playing.

This week, our small fellowship (soon to be increased as some friend-of-friend is leveling up fast) joined Portucale Electus, a portuguese-only kinship on the Evernight server.

Janariel is now a happy level 41 Minstrel, doing deeds, crafting, a proud member of the Tailor's guild and starting the work on the legendary traits.

LOTRO is beautiful, is fun, and seems to be populatd with mature players.

All in all, a good decision for an alternate MMORPG.

And the Lich King is ... DEAD !

Down we tumbled, slain by the hands of 10 great raiders.

Today we had very few wipes in the Va'kyr phase, meaning ppl started to get how to get out of the middle during the defile and back in during the Val'kyr.
So that quickly lead us to the second transition and with Heroism, the transition ended with only 1 raging spirit that came down fast.
We had 2 tries at this last Vile Spirit phase (40%-10%) and in the 2nd one, I didn't AoE, I single targetted 3 or 4. They actually aren't that bad, one only has to kite them away from others to avoid massive AoE.


In the last attempt, I was the first into Frostmourne, and I started to kill the Spirit Warden so fast I actually got aggro, but Terenas was a good boy and took it away. 2-3 seconds laster he started to Soul Rip, but as I had respecced with Shadowfury, interrupting was a blast. So, the warden was dead and I got back up.
When I got back up, things seemed still very smooth so everyone started to think, oh boy, he's going down.

And down he went 40-30-20-10% and bang.

At 10%, he killed everyone and... 5 secs later... I disconnected ! From WoW, from Vent, from everything ! I hadn't a disconnect for about 10 days now. Well, I had one at the absolute wrong time.

Luckily, I could relog back in, everyone was still dead and the lore was still starting.

I won't say anything else, not to spoil anyone's fun. Just remember, the fight ends at 10% with everyone DEAD. so DO NOT RELEASE !

And pray not to be lucky like me and have a disconnect in the next 5 mins :)

Putricide is history

And down he went, killed by 25 invigorated raiders on the first attempt tonight.
I chickened out in phase 3, when the tank decided to move him to the opposite side through the green pool. I stopped there, watching in disbelief, and then followed, healing with lifeblood and healthstone :) And down he went

Hunting High and Low

Now, it's not an A-Ha revisitation. Yesterday, once again, a part of our ICC25 chickened out and didn't bother to show up. I have an idea why: On the first day, we down 6 bosses, so plenty of loot. On the 2nd and 3rd days, it's wipe night for Putricide and Blood Queen, with only Blood Princes coming down easily. So ppl simply don't bother. That sucks.

Instead, we tried ICC10 HC, since one of our guildies has a Kingslayer main.
Tbh, I had no idea we could only go for HC after downing the LK, or at least, that was Blizzard idea.


So, we went in , and downed Marrowgar and the Gunship in Heroic mode !!!

Marrowgar is easy, provided everyone except the two tanks gather near the gate, and dps those that get spiked during the blade storm. Oh, the frost paths are way more damaging, there are more of them, the blade storm takes much more time and the spikes have a lot more HP.
We finished just in time, but we did 99% of the fight with 1 dps dead and with no melee, just ranged, including a hunter.
So, all in all, it's easy !

And, my high.. I got my HEROIC FROST NEEDLE !!! That's nearly +200 dps more, so now my GS raised to 5.7 <=> ~6700 dps on a dummy.

Lady Deathwhisper... was barely doable, because we had only 1 melee for the adherents. We still reached P2, but then adds came down the stairs and that was it.

So, next, we tried Gunship, and tbh, I didn't notice the difference. Great healing, probably, and I smashed the portal ones like usual.

Pity the heroic trinket didn't show up, but that's just the usual.. it never ever drops :)

Finally, we tried Saurfang, and although adds were coming down fast, they also seem to move faster and hit like mad. Most problematic is the fact that Saurfang heals 300% more or so, so he was stil with 100% HP after 2 or 3 waves...meaning, we have to avoid blood healing at all costs. There is a stricter dps requirement, it seems, and one of our dps was doing 3k dps or so... no way.

All in all, it was good to see some raiders getting Heroic loot, and it was even better to finally have fun again in ICC10. Heroic mode *is* less error/slack forgiving.

High and Low, as I said.