Pedro Lucas goes To WoW

WoW: Free week over.

2012-01-10T15:33:00.007Z

Results ?

All new heroics done, epox looted, CHECK !

Dragon Soul done, Deathwing is dead , CHECK !

Transmogrified my PVE gear to Merciless/T5 (Merciless is so much better!), Used Void Storage, CHECK !

Played the new Darkmoon Faire, doing all the achievements I could. CHECK!

Passed 11K achiev points, back to 1st place in guild :) CHECK

Completed Glory of the Ulduar 25, got my beautiful proto-drake, CHECK !

NEARLY did Glory of the Icecrown Heroic 25 (always some idiot causes defile).

Had fun in PVP, healers rock so much, it's now a healer's war.

All in all, I had great fun.

Is WoW still worth playing ?

Dunno.

My new i2500K machine is nearly ready. SWTOR is waiting.

WOW: Free week and Dragon Soul .. AH AH AH

2012-01-05T19:07:00.002Z

I went back to WoW to check whether 4.3 is worth playing.
From what I saw, it is NOT.
Except, of course, if you want to see all the content in one day and be done with it.

There are three new instances, one new raid, which can be entered, and conquered, by anyone, because Blizzard implemented a "look for raid", which gives loot and is (at least from a dps point of view) the easiest thing ever done.

Come on, downing a boss in DS25-LFR is as difficult as the first boss in old Deadmines.

I checked on the prerequisites, it was 370 iLvl or so. I went from 359 to 370 in 2-days by a bit of farming for Justice Points and the three new heroics.

Today I did the first 4 bosses. It was either nuke boss or "go where the other 24 are going and kill whatever they are killing". No strategy, no communication, no "I'll do this". Nothing.

I can't imagine how Deathwing is going to last more than 24 hours, because the next 4 and last bosses will probably be as easy as these first 4.

Oh dear...comparing with BWL and AQ40.. what a joke.

What else happened ?

I suspended RIFT, of course, since I'm now level 50.
My LOTRO minstrel Janariel completed all the questing, and now all that remains are a few deeds and some fun time with 3-instances with my RL pals.
SWTOR...my new PC is still under consideration. And part of it (PVP) is for me atm unplayable. Some PVE parts, the ones with lots of ppl around me, also not. I look at WoW and think that they did a very good job limiting CPU usage. Yes, in 25-raids my machine goes down, or in populated areas. But I can run everywhere on more empty servers (like Chrommaggus) and get 50 fps, continuously.
In SWTOR, I get 10-40 fps. And it oscillates a LOT, with the CPU usage always at 100% for both cores.

SWTOR: The Hunt for Gold

2011-12-29T15:36:00.005Z

So... Star Wars The Old Republic has arrived. I missed launch week because of Xmas holidays, which was actually a good thing, as I skipped the initial bug/lag/queue fest.

My machine is holding up better than expected. Alone, it's quite playable with everything maxed up except shadows. RIFT was like that too. The problem comes when I enter a populated area, with NPC's and/or players. Then, it starts to get worse, below 20fps, ie, ugly.

I'm on target for a Core i5 2500K upgrade, but I'm still selecting components, PSU and stuff. Low noise is the culprit of my delay.

Back to gameplay. I joined forces with old Lords of Midnight guildies from Chromaggus server in WoW. They are going towards dps and tanking, so I'll go towards dps and healing, which is good.

After a long debate, I decided I won't be a bald man called Netcownt anymore. It was 5 years of looking at a bald head and neck, and it sucked. It's much nicer to watch a girl, so I went for a cyborg chick, human faced, called Netgold.

She rocks ! Well, she's a Bounty Hunter, so she better rock, and rock hard. Advantage ? I'm not a Sith at heart, and we started on the Sith side, so I couldn't see myself playing the "bad guy", although SWTOR allows Dark side and Light side decision making during quests. Bounty Hunters allow me to be mercenary, ie, do the good (or evil) because I'm paid for, not because of a Jedi or Sith mentality.

It makes a difference, LOL.

So, Netgold starts on Nal Hutta, and, as a Bounty Hunter, she quickly joins "The Big Hunt". Nesingwary keeps coming to my mind, I wonder why. If I could select a surname for my toon, she'd be Netgold Nesingwary, for sure.

Levels 1-10 are spent in Nal Hutta, preparing for the Hunt, doing shores here and there. Questing is fun, although a bit too easy, specially when I get a healing companion by level 8 or so.

There is a sense of "lots of new abilities for me to press keys, all seem to do about the same thing, ie, kill stuff".
But at the same time, some common things to other MMO show up, ie resource bar management (in my case it's called Heat, opposite to rage or.. whatever rogue had, I forgot, or hunter focus), AoE, crowd control, range abilities vs melee abilities, etc.

If I could match SWTOR with WoW, Bounty Hunter looks like a hunter. What else...

Tonight I'm leaving Nal Hutta and start exploring the outside world.

RIFT is dead, long live SWTOR

2011-12-29T14:45:00.017Z

During this December , I subscribed RIFT and leveled a Mage (Warlock/Necromancer) up to level 50.

Why ? To be honest, I wanted to see the sights. Everyone kept telling me how it looked like another WoW, how irrelevant the game was, yadayada.

Well, as a lvl 50 (fresh one, for sure), I can tell it's not exactly true, RIFT is not WoW. It might be like WoW, yes, but a different WoW.

In WoW, you reach level 60,70,80,85, and all you can do is one thing: GEAR UP !

In RIFT, they understood their mistake, and changed things. Once you get to 50, you get a Planar development. Yes, it's more XP, you continue to get XP, but instead of leveling, you invest it in enhanced skills. Yes, there's also GEAR. Yes, there are dungeons, of different tiers and expertize required, there is PVP.

But there's also a thing that is dead with WoW. There's WORLD PVP. No you don't fly, you ride. You quest, you get ambushed, you get killed, ganked, all the funny stuff that makes you /yell "FILHO DA PUTA" from your grave.

So, I spent 7 free days, plus 30 (costing 5€!) plus 3 days of free game time (like SONY, Trion Worlds got hacked so they gave us complimentary game time). And in those 40 days, I reached 50, about 1 level/day, having fun.

I discovered nearly all the zones (only left a bit of Stillmoor), I participated in instant adventures ( a new RIFT feature, a bit like LOTRO skirmishes but in open world ), PVP battlegrounds (there are many), dungeons (many, too), I marvelled at some open air scenarios, and I took a lot of snapshots that I'll be sharing here. Most of all, I had fun, something I had not in WoW since my guild Arcadia split up.

So there you have it, December 2011, while waiting for SWTOR, I had a blast.

Now... talking about blasting things, SWTOR was released. So stay tuned, as I learn how to play a Bounty Hunter (currently level 10). Pictures coming right up.

Well well well WoW 4.3 looks funnier than expected

2011-11-29T05:13:00.011Z

Yes, I'm teasing, this is RIFT.

Tonight I had insomnia, so I drifted towards WoW news, found out that 4.3 is coming to Europe next week, and found my old character has ALREADY got transmogrified.

Yes, Netcownt armory data features the T4 I used in the last days of my June playing, together with my purple 359 items. AH AH AH !

On a more serious tone, patch 4.3 looks fun.

. A new Dragon Soul raid will be able for randoms. I don't know if that will play well or not, but I'm willing to try and kill Deathwing.

. There's a promising legendary questline for rogues, so why not check it ?

. A new Darkmoon faire is coming, so may be I'll make a few more decks to get me to exalted !

. There's a void storage, finally the guys at Blizzard realized that a lot collectors like myself had their banks full of crap they wanted to keep, e.g. for vanity usage. Now, with transmogrification, it will pay off. A pity it's only 80 slots. I think I have the whole bank main slots + 5 x 16 bags full of that stuff.

. And last and best, three new dungeons to fool around and piss off those "I take it seriously FFS". That looks GOOD ! After all, when was the last time a new dungeon came up ? More than 1 year ago, for sure. ZG/ZA doesn't count !

Guess I'll have some fun December, alternating between WoW 4.3 and RIFT as I level up from 25 to 50 on my warlock-necromancer-chloromancer-mage.

D'rifting towards Star Wars

2011-11-25T12:47:00.001Z

While waiting for SWTOR to get going by Christmas time and thanks to a promotion I decided to see Rift in full. 5 Eur for 30 days of discovery is cheap. Graphics for the 2nd zone 21-29 Gromwood are fantastic. It looks like Silverpine, it has pvp and the nightfall brings hostile undead like the village near SFK I used to have fun as a human lock during the day with pvp, before Blizzard ruined it.

D'rifting away

2011-11-21T21:31:00.009Z

The last weeks I tried a few new MMORPGs, including (7-day free-to-play) Rift.

WoW.

Yes. it's WoW. A better Wow. It's Warhammer. A better Warhammer. It seems a bundle of all the MMORPG's since 2005, packed together.

Stunning graphics, fluidity is better than WoW. FPS ? Quite configurable, from 20-40 in my machine, depending of the settings. It uses DX11, and unlike WoW, you can see it. Quests ? Same as LOTRO or the first WoW quests, you level up fast, it has some escorts, some grind, some walk-to chains. A bit too repetitive, but that's the nature of these games, the designers are afraid to run away from what they know people like or are used to.

I leveled a Mage/Warlock up to level 20, did all the quests in the first Silverwood zone, I went for PVP in their Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin (better copies), went for an instance (forgot it's name), visited their main city, and played both factions (Ascent guardians and defiants)

There are Rifts all over. It has public quests like Warhammer. It's more unpredict
able than WoW.
It has professions, I leveled foraging, alchemy and runecrafting (WoW enchanting).
It has guilds, I joined one.
It has LFG and battleground(Warfront) queues, I joined them.
It even has a Prince like Arthas. It's called... Prince Hylas. Guess why ?
It has a lvl 50 cap.
It has achievemens. Lots of them.
It has artifacts.
It has triple talent trees up to 51 points, so called Soul Trees.
It has world events, it seems like father Snowfrost or something is coming. Ha !
It has addons. I'll try their DPS/HPS meters.

All in all...WoW universe seems bigger, but Rift is the absolute best copy of WoW I've ever seen. Honestly.

Needless to say, all the people I played with are old WoW players. And ofc, like WoW, it's not F2P.

That's the bad news.

First impressions

2011-11-12T10:11:00.006Z

This is supposedly illegal at this beta point so..

Well, cinematics are absolutely GREAT. It beats Blizzard by the mile.
The game is heavy. On my machine, I get 17 fps average, sometimes goes 30, rarely, sometimes goes 5 fps, on Alliance or Sith (Bounty Hunter - Hutta) starter zones.

So unless you got a 3Ghz dual core or so, forget SWTOR.

As I expected, for a ranged player that shoots from afar, the playability and realism is nice, lasers go back and forth, explosions are fine, killing moves too.

For a melee/jedi player, it sucks. You have to run to people that is shooting at you, slicing them with a jedi sword that doesn't kill them immediately, and there they stand, on their feet, point at you with a gun and shooting. It's laughable. As a Jedi, I went up to 3 mobs and all 3 were shooting at me for 1 minute or so as I sliced them slowly. Not realistic at all.

Quest cinematics are nice, you can go at a slow pace and listen to all the conversation and choose which answer to give (weird, the written answer and what the toon says most times are quite different, sometimes with different meaning).

I'm level 2 atm, so I'm not exactly an expert.

PVP seems to open at lvl 10, hopefully I get there this weekend.

I saw some people flying around with bike. Looks fun.

Overall... I've got a problem: SWTOR requires me to buy a new PC and to move all my crap to it. Good thing I tested this before I bought it.

Pedro Lucas Goes to War of the Stars

2011-11-11T16:16:00.002Z

Ooohooo I've been selected to (stress) test Bioware's SWTOR.

A new adventure awaits me.

First things first. Install and set it up ! And then... lets go to War.

Walclaft goes East.. and down

2011-10-28T14:14:00.006+01:00

Funny old world of war... Blizzard figured that people are tired of western looking games, gothic stuff and all that crap, so they decided to march east towards the chinese borders and create a new Warcraft expansion called Mists of Pandaria.
It seems lvl 90 will be the new cap, and of course, the action will take place in another continent, so called Pandaria, a native race with panda bears standing on two paws, practicing martial arts and praying like monks, the new class.

It makes me laugh. Panda bears fighting ? I'm sure the new areas will be wonderful to see, and it's worthwhile playing for a while... but... bear monks with rice-farming/vietcong-like hats ? Ha. Haha. Hahahahahaha.

Warcraft goes Brazilian

2011-09-27T22:47:00.003+01:00

I've just read the latest WoW news, and it seems there's a Brazilian version coming soon.

So, instead of Stormwind, there'll be Ventobravo. Instead of Ironforge, Forjadeferro. E Lua de Prata, etc.

Laughing out Loud.

PS: No WoW since July, 1, and happily living ever after. Well, playing LOTRO, actually. The Rise of Isengard expansion is up today.

PS2: Will I resist 4.3 ?

Ex-End: Can't get any worse can it

2011-07-28T11:40:00.003+01:00

A friend showed me today the Wow Character of that slime that killed dozens in Norway.

Guess what ? His char was on Silvermoon EU, my server ! ARRGH !

And he was part of some guilds, one of them, a top guild.

This just shows how MMORPG are weird, you can be playing alongside a serial killer and never know.

This slime, I would personally kill myself, never mind about the Fylgies and other norwegian fairies. I hope someone does.

THE END (?)

2011-07-20T18:01:00.002+01:00

I'm done with WoW.
Old friends gone or going.
Had no fun with Cata.
May be sometime in the future.
May be when the next expansion comes out.
May be never.

So, for me, casual LOTRO, SWTOR.

And Real Life gaming. Much better !

A nice raiding evening

2011-06-15T23:52:00.004+01:00

A few more bosses down, on tonight's raid.

Funny how I'm so tired about WoW. I didn't even bother to read on the bosses lore, or to check on the entrances or even to remember the boss names As a result, it took me a while to figure out where BoT entrance was, after a wipe. But we killed Halfus for sure. Nuke each add, ignore whelps, nuke boss. Can't get much easier...but for sure this boss must be a healing check, with all the interrupts,knockbacks and the only-instant cast restrictions!

As to Blackwing Descent, we killed the first four bosses.
The first boss is easy with 3 ranged dps, last week was a breeze with lock,mage,hunter aoeing the lava parasites from the pillars. Tonight only a mage and warlock, so it was way messier, with adds all around. But we managed to 1-shot it.
The 2nd 4xbosses, 1-shot too, I forgot about the purple spots for dpsing, it costed me top dps ranking. But I didn't forget the oozes ;)
The 3rd boss... the vial one, was 1-shot last week, but this week was a bit messier and caused a few wipes, the last one because we had too much dps and got the boss to 20% before the 2nd green vial. But we did it after we paused dps at the right time ;)
Finally, the 4th/gong boss, last week we had a mage banging the gongs. This week I had to do it, and because of it I was chased and died (swiftness doesnt help when there's fire all around ;(), but was CR and we 1-shott'ed him.

All in all, a good raid, 5 bosses down, 2 of them new.
A very good raiding leader, good communication during the fight and tips.

Next Monday, the Valiona brothers.. and Nefarian is getting closer !

A legendary week. Well, not really

2011-06-15T17:30:00.008+01:00

Last week I had some fun again raiding.
My near-latin guild decided to enter BWD to test ourselves. And we did. In two hours, we trashed 3 bosses, 3-shot,2-shot,1-shot. The last boss had only a few tries, it is very easy, and we got him to 5K HP ! Not bad, considering half the guild had never entered BWD.
Hopefully tonight we do a better job and we kill at least 4/6 BWD.
My performance was not bad, always on top or in the top two, and 1 mistake.. damn me. I died in the Toxitron fight... the damn ooze got me.

In the meantime, I've been soloing or dualboxing some instances, after having decided that it would be fun to see them again and most of all, to complete my Tiered equipment. Therefore I dualboxed Gruul's Lair, Karazhan, which is actually soloable with no effort for the most part. The chess is hard to solo, so I asked the help of my little girl and we both did it and ended up fighting against each other. And I lost !!!!! LOL
As for Machezzar, I kept dying because of the enfeeble (1 HP) until I remembered that the, obviously, the tank is not enfeebled so I drain tanked him as demo and it went just fine.
I also went for 6/6 im Mount Hyjal. I got to 4/6 easily. The 5th boss, Azgalor, is a pain to solo, but I found the way to do dualbox it during the 1st part of the battle until my mon-tank (healer) dies and summons a Doomguard. Then I drain-tanked (as affliction) the boss with Thrall's help, while the pet tank tanked the doomguard. Worked fine. There's a warlock solo video, which does what I do, and had enough patience to keep dying and keep killing trash waves after defeat until he did it.
Archimonde is also a pain to solo, and to dualbox I need a real person, because of fears and for the "omg falling panic button".

All in all, not a bad week, since today... Garr dropped my legendary bindings.

So.. YES !

I now have a legendary Thunderfury !

Job done

2011-06-06T10:21:00.002+01:00

After 6 months of some fun leveling my alts, I finished the job. All 10 classes are at 85. Last one was my Hunter, and it was for sure the easiest thing I could do. It's so easy to outperform other classes even with lower levels it sucks. In total, I did about 20 pugs, the last 5 or so of them at 84, in 85 dungeons, chosen "specific" in LFG. I always came on top on dps trash, and nearly always came on top in boss dps. I don't understand what is going on, but it surely seems a huge lack of balance. May be it levels up at 85.

Anyway, it was fun. Now it's time to get back to some solo farming for the mats (namely Blood of Mountain) for legendaries, for the insane title, and some other crap.

This week I did daily ZA-mount timed runs. The first one we missed by 20 secs, but the next ones were ok. 2 more days or so and I will get my mount, as well as every guildie that wants them.

Bane of the Obsolete Expansion

2011-05-23T10:34:00.010+01:00

Always liked the word Bane, it's a deity from the D&D Forgotten Realms novels, Lord Bane, the Black Hand. Last week I got to be Bane of the Fallen King, by downing Arthas in Heroic mode. It was nice and hard, even as 85. Our tank and a few dps died at the beginning of the Frostmourne phase, so we did the whole last phase with no offtank to soak the spirits damage. But we managed. It's a pity that our guild doesn't have enough people for a 10-run.

Having 11/12 ICC10 HC downed during WOTLK, it was a shame for me to miss this event. Well, now, no longer.

Meanwhile, I continue my near-solo WoW experience. Got all the gear and saw nearly everything I wanted from ZG/ZA, and I'm horrified to get into dungeons. I'm leveling the last characters to 85, DK, rogue and hunter. DK is so fun and easy to go as tank. I nearly always outdps even dps DKs, I keep the aggro with the blink of an eye, and even have fun doing mitigation all the time so that the healers have nothing to do except heal dpsers.

But I must say, Blizzard does a TERRIBLE and I mean TERRIBLE job in this dungeon business. From lvl 83 to lvl 85, two entire levels, the LFG system only selects Vortex Pinnacle and Stonecore. I know all the mob timers by now. It's so stupid, no RNG, nothing, everything looks dull. This game is really lacking creative development.

Today, I will become Master of Alterac Valley, 2 victories to go on the last achievement.

What else have I been doing ? Solo of course.. I've been completing the new Azeroth quests for the areas to understand e.g. why VanClef's daughter is the queen of Deadmines, etc. So far I completed Loch Modan, Westfall and Redridge. Going slow, no hurries here.

Last but not least... this week I soloed Molten Core (actually, dualboxed it with Tarithel but it's soloable for sure) and what did Ragnaros drop ???

Yes, the Eye of Sulfuras !!! So I will have not one, but TWO legendary weapons.
AH AH AH.

Legendary fun

2011-05-18T09:57:00.005+01:00

Suspended WoW and tried to stick to LOTRO for a few weeks, just having fun with RL friends. It's fun, but we only play late night, and there's a problem with LOTRO. It's always the same thing we do. Kill mobs, click on stuff, und zu weiter. There are thousands of quests, and they always look the same. We don't go into dungeons, because most require 6 and we are only 3. So we advance in the fellowship epic quest chain, which covers all the areas in LOTRO. We are now finishing Mirkwood, and pretty soon we'll be out of things to do outside. There's Enedwaith, a area Turbine created to stall players, while waiting for a new expansion that'll be out.. Christmas ?

Anyway... Star Wars Old Republic is stalling too, Rift.. no thank you, and Star Wars Galaxies ... not yet.

So I decided to give it a go on solo wow (kind of), getting 10-day free on a second account and using it to pay 1 free month for my main account, and doing a few things differently.

Going solo achievements again, for cooking, fishing, PVP, Insane title, mount farming, rep. farming for the 3 reps. I'm not yet exalted and.. farming for Thunderfury ! Yes, that's right, a warrior weapon for my lock LOL !
I farmed Garr and Geddon during vanilla and never saw the bindings drop (think I saw it once, in a 40-raid in 2006-7). Well, bosses are now soloable easily, and Geddon dropped it for me last night!! I also bought 6 enchanted elementium bars, so all I need now is for Garr to be nice and 4 more elementiums, and I will get a *LEGENDARY WEAPON*. That will make (kind of) for the idiocy of not having the AQ40 feat of strength because the fuckers at Blizzard removed the Bang-A-Gong quest, and I'm stuck with the scepter and can't bang it anymore. FUCKERS !

In PVP, I'm at 1400 rating in 2v2, found a nice frost mage to play that is not a FFS kind of guy. I hope he'll stay around.

Raidwise.. everything is the same. Kind of. I lost guild runs for the skeleton flying mount from the ICC Raider Glory as I was too fed up with ICC to enter it again, a few months ago. But tomorrow I will kill the LK in HC and will get the "Bane" title. I know it's a sucky title as I only did 11/12 HC as lvl 80, but still... it was not my fault the bloody damn guild fell apart :(

FDPs r Us

2011-04-17T20:20:00.005+01:00

Just now I had a glimpse of why I'm right getting out of WoW after /500 days played.

I entered a Hall of Origination as healer explicitly to go for Setesh. I said in the beginning in /party that I was entering only for it, so if we please could do it.
I asked again when the platform went up, and I said I wanted Setesh, but I would ofc stay for the last boss. The tank druid ignored me and after my insistence, solely replied "My dinner is rdy soon" (meaning couldn't fucking care less of what you're saying in chat or why you are playing, I'm here to do my thing, so fuck off).
I said that was rude as I had asked in the beginning to do it and he had said nothing about dinner. He just said, he didnt know when dinner would be ready.

It's been 3 years since I called fdp to a player, and it costed me a suspended account, but today I had it.

I switched to /say and "Uma vez fdp sp fdp", because that kind of attitude resembles a few portuguese attitudes I already had in dugeons. Guess what ?

Answer: "Nem sp". I knew it.

My answer: "Quase sp". "Mas dou o beneficio da duvida".

I healed through the Rajh trash, when I could have wiped it. And I said during the Rajh fight that I could be a fdp too and cause us to wipe, but I wasn't doing it.

Btw, the run was a blitz run, with tank having no respect for my mana/drinking. But thanks to my awareness, we never wiped, trash or bosses.

Enough said why I am leaving World of Warcraft. Because of this kind of players, which unfortunately were raised by parents giving them no sense of respect for others, so they just act in virtual life like they do in real life. We see it everyday in our roads, in our government, etc.

Clarabela is (the last) Cataclysm hero

2011-04-16T18:30:00.004+01:00

Who would say that my beloved restoration shaman would become a Cataclysm dungeon hero, healing all of them ?

Still got 3-4 crappy items, but tbh, it went easily, with just a few hiccurps being the first time, and having about 343i.

One week to go. Forums are full and I mean *full* of old players leaving. The problems they talk about ? Exactly the same.

The hottest topic is here.

The World is empty.
No world PVP.
No one anywhere but at the two hubs, or at archaeology spots, doing their stuff.
No sense of community.
Factions no longer getting together to do something, be it a world boss or defending a city.
A lot of rude people in battlegrounds and PUGS.
Difficult to find healers/tanks for progress guilds.
Everyone wants the fast lane, free epics.
It's all about achievements/iLevel. No ilvl, no achievement, no raid, no invite, no nothing.
At the same time, things are too easy, because Blizzard went into casual mode. It created concept "gear rules all", "skill is obsolete".
Anger, anger everywhere.

My guild Arcadia still standing, but still empty, people left. Unless the heroes return...

I'm outta here. I won't regret it.

(Have to repeat it to myself over and over, after all it's an psychological dependency, I have to admit, after playing for so long. There'll be a few more posts like this LOL).

PS: My LOTRO Minstrel is 64,999, near cap level. Pretty soon I'll be checking my first Portucale Electus raid. The character fluidity sucks, game mechanics seem too basic (don't get knocked-back, stay away from green sh*t on the floor), but the overall graphics are great. And the community... Oh my lord, what a difference.

Silly me

2011-04-07T12:34:00.004+01:00

I was in a battleground. Guess what happened. A picture's worth a thousand words.

Patalogica is 85.. and 20 days to go

2011-04-02T13:59:00.002+01:00

My primary account will close in approx. 20 days. I've run out of toons to level up, got 5+2 maxed out. Patalogica breezed as a firemage to cap level, and made me proud, pulling some good top dps in trash pulls, and in some bosses like the wind boss in Vortex Pinnacle, or the last boss in Stonecore where quickness made up for lack of gear (311 iLvl at 85 is way low :)).

All that remains to be done is to level up some professions, without much grinding, hopefully, I'll do it slowly, and to get a few fish/cook achievements for my main character. And i'll keep doing some casual PVP'ing, not gear hunting, for sure.

Raiding ? Nah. My new guild went in casual mode, and tbh, I don't even want to ask if/when we will raid. My $homeguild Arcadia is still frozen...

I hope I'll have Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman 4.1 patch up before May 23th, so I can see what they did (or didn't) change regarding old boss strategies.

After that... Star Wars Galaxies might be a good replacement to spend a few insomnia nights, and LOTRO will keep me up in the virtual chatting, in portuguese, as we're all portuguese, mature, well behaved, no huss, no fuss.

Pity I didn't finish the Insane achievement, only one bit to go.. I surely looked like an Insane player, >365 days /played is insanity, surely.

But unless Arcadia returns.. I probably won't. Too bored with WoW.

An epiphany - Why was it so fun ?

2011-03-27T11:46:00.006+01:00

Yesterday I joined a party with my leveling mage (near 84).

It was a major source fun. Why, you ask, do you like playing a mage ?
No, no, not that. It's dull, boring, in normal conditions, specially in arcane mode (tried and *HATED* it).

But yesterday there were no normal conditions. The tank was a DK lvl 85 with 107K, some intellect gear equipped, and had no idea whatsoever how to keep a multiple of mobs threatening him. He tried, for sure, but failed miserably.

Oh, and I forgot to tell the instance... Stonecore :)

What happened ? We managed the first wave, mainly because of my multi-mob CC ability, frostnova'ing, ring of frost'ing, sheeping, blinking, blastwaving, dragon breathing, iceblocking, etc. On the second wave we wiped. On the third wave dpsers were kicking him, but I decided to say "no". So we went on. After a bit, the healer threatened to leave if we didnt kick the tank, dpsers left afterwards, and healer left too, so I was left alone with Louisa, my beloved DK tank.
After a bit, a new fellowship joined, and we continued. I kept doing my job of keeping ppl alive. Healer was running around, hunter was running around, tank was running around, mobs were running around. After the dragon, on the sentry pulls, of course all hell broke loose, as he pulled the first group, and got the ogre bonus, and later the sentry calling another group bonus. More wiping, and this time, the kick succeeded :(

Why such a long story ? Well... it was fun. It was so fun my belly was hurting from laughing. And why was it ?

Because it looked like a PVP fight, and it wasn't. It was a PVE fight, but without that stupid artificial thing called "threat". There's no such thing as threat in real life War. In War, the opponent goes for the weakest link, not for the strongest.

It's not the first time it happens, it always happens when a tank dies. And it's always the same thing, players start playing much more efficiently and having fun with their class when the tank dies and there are 1 or 2 mobs on the loose.

But yesterda the tank was alive, everyone was alive, and fighting for their lives. For real !

And so, I imagined how it would be if all trash fights, in all dungeons (may be bosses too), how all PVE would be if there was no threat, or if the threat was 90% removed, so that a tank could catch the attention of others, but only briefly, only if there was not much dps/healing involved.

The fights would be real fights, with interrupts, with multiple CC, with a little more coordination required, but a LOT more skill required, not a LOT of more gear required, like it is nowadays.

In conclusion, without or with little threat, WoW dungeons would be GREAT !

Blizzard tried something like this with the Faction champions in Trial of the Crusader, but unfortunately, it only had the classes we know. The best part is that it was a randomized set, and in HC mode, mobs were untauntable. The worst part ? Of course, it was a 10-raid, you needed a guild, or an achievement, or be overgeared, to get in. Otherwise you were stuck doing stupid tournament dailies outside.

So, again, RANDOMIZE trash. WoW would be BETTER. More skill, more attention required, less gear ! Less automation. Less "playing with your eyes closed"

Time for Blizzard to start thinking, not of "heroic modes", but of "real war modes". Probably too late for me anyway, but still...

This was my epiphany during last night's wait for the Australian F1 Grand Prix to start.

One account cancelled, one to go

2011-03-26T09:06:00.007Z

In the last year or so, several players that played with me in my guilds on Chromaggus, Lightbringer and Silvermoon stopped playing, including no less than four guild masters. Some of them for personal reasons, but many left because others left, because they got bored, got sick with other players attitudes, or the game mechanics.

This week I tried to understand what is going on with the player base, and with my sickness towards WoW. The topics with most views on wow forums are, undoubtly, negative, as you can see in http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/. The most popular are
-"Is the game dying"
-"Wow player login decline since January"
-"The attitude spawning from this game makes me sick".

It has become an utterly boring game, with a spicy biasing on "gear outperforms skill by thousands of miles."

The quick guide to WoW is:
You level a character
You can kill several mobs simultaneously (e.g in LOTRO, more than 1 is a challenge), You go through the same hub quests, in Cataclysm, worse, in linear mode.
You reach your cap level,
You farm equipment in 5-dungeons. PUGs work, but you can get ninja'd.
You farm reputations for more equipment or enchants.
You farm medals for more equipment or enchant.
and then..
You can't even enter a single-raid, unless you get a "gear level", unless you can do "imba dps", and an "achievement" for it, which you don't have, unless you are in a guild, unless the guild raids, unless you can raid with the guild at nearly all times (or you get demoted).

In WoW, there is no such thing as "we need a player for a raid. If you are nice, and know what do do, come along". In LOTRO it's *ALL* there is.

It was like this during TBC, it was like this during WOTLK, and it is like this during Cataclysm. Nothing changed.

If you go for PVP, it's the same. If you reach cap level and enter a battleground, you are smashed for having 0 resilience. You have to slowly go up the ladder, or go into arenas, meaning, you need stable partners to be successful. You cannot have fun trying to kill a player, because the player will always kill you, irrespective of your skill. Blizzard introduced rated battlegrounds, which I hoped would allow skill to show up. Wrong, it's simply a thing for elitist guilds show off their style, and titles, like Commander, a title I got in Vanilla by single-player PVP in battlegrounds for hours (10-hour Alterac Valleys), are now obtainable by those players. More casual PVP players, can't kill them, because again, gear outperforms skill. And all these players do is farm farm farm. Farm honor points, conquest points, valor points, heroism points, stupidity points.

So what prevents you from having fun ? From the forum answers, and my oppinion, addons, damage meters, achievement checking, anything that promotes elitism.

Elitism is good, WoW say. We need it to support our player base. LOTRO does not have elitism, people invite casuals to raids, and even radiance, an elistist stat from LOTRO, was removed this week. Blizzard will say, sure, but we have 10M players, you have 250K or so. True.

What does elitism promote ? Rudeness, lack of cooperation, of social attitude, of comprehension. You see that in battlegrounds, in dungeons, in chat, in trade, nearly everywhere except may be on raids, where cooperation is mandatory.

And this is what is causing me to stop playing. I don't have a playing guild, I'm too bored to go into a guild and having to again demonstrate I'm a valuable player, while I see the guild falling apart because 1 single healer or tank leaves in rage, in anger, because he's too pro, and we're all noobs, and there we go again.

No. I'll be back playing, when and if people I played with come back, and if I can have fun again, which I doubt. Atm, WoW is boring, elitist, full of people with the wrong attitude.

One account is cancelled, the other one will last a few more weeks.

PS: At the same time, I saw surprisingly, a few days ago, during my work time, Blizzard entertainment founders ringing the closing bell at Nasdaq. Why so ? Blizzard has become a successful money drainer. But that's about it.

Morkin, the son of the Moonprince of Midnight

2011-03-14T18:33:00.002Z

My first char, Morkin the Warrior, reached 85 today, tanking through dungeons from 83 upwards. Comparing with druid and pala and DK, it's the one I had more trouble doing dps, and keeping aggro. Why ? Because, when a tank gets to 84 and starts to tank normal 84-85 dungeons, it gets a sometimes big.. problem.

The problem is of course, that aggro machines with iLvl35X doing 20K are using normal instances to cap their reputation with the Cataclysm factions. So.. a poor geared 310-320 iLvl level 84 tank like me suddenly has to keep aggro on 4-5 mobs that are being nuked by those BWD/.. geared players that usually have no respect whatsoever for whoever is tanking, attacking multiple mobs in the 1st second of the fight, draining the mana out of healers due to spurious aggro, and forcing the tank to keep all its senses 120% alert to keep the mobs focused on him while doing 1/4 of the dps. Grim'Batol Trol'vir, or Origination Halls. Nightmarish :)

Tell me about playability..

But I'm 85 now, so things will get better as I get some gear towards i329.

Tier 11 2-bonus set

2011-03-10T23:33:00.002Z

Today I got lucky in Baradin Hold and got the T11 warlockie leggings, enabling the 2-piece bonus set. What a crap. I don't remember such a bad bonus "Reduces the cast time of your Chaos Bolt, Hand of Gul'dan, and Haunt spells by 10%". Talk about lack of imagination. I did 14.4 kdps with no flask/food. Oh well, one more 359 item, hopefully it will pump me to the 15k dps area.

On a different note, I installed the PTR and even got into Zul'Aman, one of the "new" dungeons in the 4.1. content patch. Blizzard are slacking more and more. They are now revamping old dungeons, Zul'Aman, as it seems, with little to no changes in game mechanics. Hopefully Zul'Gurub will be a bit better.

Alt-ing continues. Clarabela is now 85, resto'ing in dungeons, approaching 500 in jewelcrafting and enchanting, and 328 iLvl. Soon, I'll taste some heroics. I got all the healing trinkets, including the egg one, a nice trinket that shields a target for 30 sec. and keeps generating mana until the shield is consumed by absorbed damage, releasing more mana. I created a macro to cast it on me, but I've read the best thing to do is to cast it on a pet (as long as the hunter/lock isn't an idiot and doesnt have the pet growling/taunting) since they get so much AoE avoidance.

Drôle de guerre

2011-03-02T18:42:00.005Z

As the french in 1940 before the Germans attacked them, I'm also in standby, leveling alts and waiting for something to happen.

Supposedly, my new casual 2-day raid guild will start raiding tomorrow. Tbh, it is likely that at the end of the raid I will simply stop forever, such is my lack of focus. Arcadia, my old guild, is to be blamed. I enjoyed being part of a real team. But a team is not a bunch of people that get together to play. There must be something else a chemistry, and most times, there isn't. Arcadia had it. May be I will get lucky with Vindication, who knows. I've been running some weekly Baradin Hold, and it's been working.

At the moment, Star Wars: Galaxies and LOTRO are my favorite MMORPG. Actually Portucale Electus, my LOTRO guild, is very good, it has a mix of core and casual players, and the core players *do* help the casuals, by running dungeons with them, helping in quests, etc. It's the LOTRO magic :)

Meanwhile i'm lacking guts to try tanking a heroic. I got 332 iLvl with about 120K hp with Moonprince my paladin.

Ah, last but not least, my druid tank reached 85, and the last weeks were spent with Clarabela, healing her cowy way up to 84. Soon she too will reach the peak.

WoW lost the edge for me. May be it was because of the AQ40 scepter mess, may be it was just because i'm playing since 2005 and ... it's a long time. Overall, it's for sure because of the kind of players you get in PUG's. It's so so so different from LOTRO. Players are so much more fun, kind, mature..yep that's the word. It's a game tuned for adults while WoW has become a youngster's game. Too funny, at the same time too professional, too "rated". There are no /recounts in LOTRO. Enough said.

Today I'm going to subscribe Galaxies, as I've been having fun with the game, and I will keep playing until Star Wars the Old Republic, comes out. Then we'll see.

Not a Veteran of the Shifting Sands.. WTF !?

2011-02-10T17:32:00.003Z

Today I found out that I am missing the "Veteran of the Shifting Sands" feat of strength, although I completed (or so I thought) the AQ40 scepter chain quest and got the scepter. It seems we had to do the additional quest, given by Jonathan the Revelator, the npc near the gates of AhnQiraj, to bang a Gong. Guess what, the fucking bastards at Blizzard decided to remove the quest with 4.0.3x, so called Cata, and so, I cannot complete it.

Some quotes from chaps that, like me, didn't get it, Wowhead courtesy:

appearently, we had to do one more final quest, treasure of the timeless one, after getting the scepter, i was among the many who had recieved the scepter and have thought it ends there and i have the FoS in my pocket but boy oh boy was i sad the day shattering came and there was no any feat of strength in my achievements tab, ticketed and thumbsup we'll see what happens, will edit the post

^was also told I had to wait till Cata, then was told that no, I hadn't done the last quest (and with no weapon in my inventory to prove that I had...). I'd be curious to know if yours is glitching out too and supposedly you haven't done the final step as well. Just from the last few posts, seems there are plenty of us out there with useless scepters and no feats. /sigh.

Of Healing and Tanking part II

2011-02-03T00:30:00.003Z

This week I took a few hours to start leveling some of my alts, namely my Resto shaman, or as my kid would say, Clarabela, my little cow. I soloed a few quests, and then set sail for dungeons. At lvl 81 now.

Needless to say, what I was suspicious of (huge lack of balance between healing chars) was confirmed.

With my holy shaman, I am able to heal without any problem, any trash or boss (with a iLvl of about 250, 30K HP, 30K mana), and I end up with 50% mana or more.

Actually, in Orgrimmar, I disabled my mana totem, enabled my water globes, and started to spam heal using all healing spells except Great Healing Wave, ie, Riptide, Healing Wave, Chain Heal... guess what, after 5 minutes, my mana was still at >80%.

This is *RIDICULOUS*. My priest looses all its mana at 75% of a fight and struggles like hell to keep people up.

I don't know what they are really going to do for 4.0.6, but if their plan is to to make dungeons easier, and to think that the unbalance will disappear just like that..

On the tanking side, I'm now leveling my 4th tank, Rothron the druid, and enjoying it a lot. I'm a dungeon king now, nearly 0 mistakes, and smooth fast runs. Near lvl 84 now.

On a different note, tonight I started doing Warlock+Priest arenas, playing with my kid for a few rounds before dinner. Guess what, she never played WoW... and we actually won 1 game (and nearly won another). She heals, I kill. If only they knew they are being beaten by a pre-teen girl and an old wizard.

Of raiding.. and of Healing and Tanking

2011-01-27T10:32:00.004Z

For starters, yesterday was a memorable day: I crossed the 10000 achievements boundary, in style :), reaching 525 in First Aid (damn so many bandages for that crap).

Last night, I *finally* kick started my cataclysm raid era by going into Baradin Hold with my italian guild Vindication and killing Algaloth. On the first try, a few of us noobilized and stayed 3-4 yards from our tank, so we died. Or that, or there was no dispelled. On the second try, it came down easily, with me doing ~13k dps. It was not perfect, far from that, and as one can see from recount, there was a hunter doing 16k dps. I've got 351 iLvl, 5 epics, the same as him. So, that's my target, 16k on Algaloth. I tested a bit on training dummies before I went in, and I was doing 11.5k unbuffed.

Tbh I find it it weird that a ranged with 350 iLvl can reach 16k dps on a single-target 5 min. fight. And as I've seen from 4.0.6, they are nerfing warlocks and buffing hunters so... I think Blizzard balance teams are getting worse.

A confirmation of this fact is what I found out this week. My priest is i329 with 2K spirit and 68K mana. Every time I go into a normal dungeon, I finish most bosses with no mana (Siamat,or the 1st boss in Vash'r dungeon, etc), and have to use shadowfiend and sometimes hymn of hope and even kill myself to allow free healing for the last seconds. I tried 1 heroic and I suffered like hell to heal the 1st boss in Vahs'r. I suceeded, but I left as I was too fed up to continue. Then I went as a paladin tank with a druid healer. The healer had also i329. Guess what ? At the end of the fight, he had above 60% mana. What was the difference ? Ok, may be it was because I was tanking. I as a tank was healing myself, mitigating damage on me and others through the use of my abilites. It could be that most tanks are absolute idiots and all they do is threat + dps and don't care about their party. But even so, things are very unbalanced, and from what I saw in the 4.0.6 notes, holy priests are not getting buffed (oh yeah, 15% in Circle of healing..:P)

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ?

The silly game mechanics

2011-01-21T22:43:00.002Z

Things were supposed to change from WOTLK to Cataclysm. They haven't. It's true, you can now perform some crowd-control.. if you want. But most times, tanks can tank it all (I have done it in normal, and works fine). Bosses are still ridiculously easy, specially in normal mode. In heroics, you should CC, and depending on tank and healer, you must, but you are not obliged to.
Also, the gearing process is still the same. If you want to raid, you cannot go inside in greens, like it was in vanilla, when you could go with greens to Molten Core, provided you knew exactly what to do. Now ? No way. Not only you have the abject GearScore/iLvl , you also need achievements, otherwise you can't join any pugs. And even if you want, you cannot join a guild raid because in iLvl333 blue (so called rare) gear, you cannot do it. You need a mix of heroic lvl346 and raid359 gear to start raiding.
Supposedly.
I haven't done it yet. After rejoining by $home guild, I found out it is still void of active players, so I now joined an italian guild called Vindication, which will soon start raiding and will do only 2 raid days a week.
That is more than enough for me at this point.
My warlock has 346 iLvl gear, and has been doing up to 14k dps single target in heroic bosses. It still lacks about 4% hit for raids, but he should do reasonable well in the first raid bosses.
My paladin and priest are being geared also, and farming rep in normal.
I've started running Karazhan (finally got exalted) for the mount, and also found out it can be a huge source of farming, since the mobs drop gold equivalent to Cataclysm mobs.
I've also started trying to solo AQ40 bosses for reputation. The first boss is utterly hard to solo, due to its mechanics (mind controls and cast interruptions), but I've managed to solo it with my priest. Sartura was pretty easy to solo. I've also tried soloing Kurinaxx but it worked badly, as we get trapped and get a healing debug. But i'lll solve the problem soon, I hope.
In the near future, I'll try to dualbox some BlackTemple and HyjalPast trash and/or bosses.
I have the dream of dualboxing TK for the ashes of A'lar, but I don't think I have a chance for now. May be with better gear.
PVP wise, I've been doing some runs, and finding again that I'm good at it, when everyone has the same gear level as me, ie, most people have <1000 resilience, and when I go for demonology, my oldschool spec.
Need to get some more time to play.

2011 in slow motion

2011-01-05T14:48:00.003Z

The year has started slowly, after a Christmas break where I had no computer, no mobile, no nothing, only chanfana, cabrito, and some other stuff to eat that's really bat for your cholesterol. Mine rose to 238, and is going down, whether I want it or not !

WoWwise, it's been fun, but a little lonely. A few Arcadians from my guild got back, so I went back too. But I'm still Puggin'g in dungeons atm ;-(

Last night I finished the last dungeon I missed, Halls of Origination. So now I only need to see the new heroic revamped SFK and DM.

That said, let me make a table:

TANK DPS HEALER JOY-SCORE COMMENT
Throne of the Tides YES YES NO 3 easy
Blackrock Caverns YES NO NO 3 tips
The Stonecore YES YES NO 3 it's a tunnel :(
Lost City of the Tol'vir NO YES NO 5 it's outside !!
Vortex Pinnacle NO YES NO 5 imba graphics
Grim Batol NO YES NO 3 dwarves...
Halls of Origination NO YES NO 5 an egyptian parody

I haven't done heroics yet. Today I'm starting to try and PUG some. My iLvl is 336, so I really need to get some gear. I'm doing 8K and may do a bit more after perfecting my new abilites. I had very little time for them. Warlock changed a lot.

There's now a Soulburn => Instant SoulFire.
There's now a Demon Soul=> Critical imp
There's now a Fel Flame => Endless immolate.
There's now a Bane of Havoc=> 15% of dmg on others replicated to baned.
There's now a Jinx => spreaded Curse of Elements.
There's now a Dark Intent => +3% haste buff on 1 party + up to 9% dps/heal.

Meanwhile, I've learned all the dailies that I need to do. Basically, there are:

- 6x Therazane in Deepholm ( I absolutely hate that place)
- 1x Ramkahen in Uldum (nice to make my daily transmute life->air and make 15x30gold)
- 6x Wildhammer Clan.
- 2x Cook+Fish daily. I'm using them to slowly level up. My time will come...
- 6x (actually 12x as we always hold Baradin Hold on Frostmane)

That makes it 25 dailes. It's a lot, but i'm doing them in packs. Thank god some rewards like enchants are now Bind-on-account !!!

Last but not least. If you're like me and hate logging in and getting a slow motion start because the Trade District has about 1000 players packed up.. there's now a new Inn, AH and bank in the Dwarven District. Yay... silly me, I missed that for an entire month !

Merry Christmas Wowcrafters

2010-12-23T20:22:00.011Z

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

2010-12-20T15:49:00.003Z

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

2010-12-12T16:17:00.007Z

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

2010-12-06T22:29:00.004Z

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

2010-11-30T19:36:00.006Z

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 !

2010-11-27T18:16:00.005Z

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

2010-11-24T00:07:00.013Z

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

2010-11-15T17:25:00.004Z

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

2010-11-08T21:34:00.007Z

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

2010-10-28T19:20:00.007+01:00

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

2010-10-24T17:21:00.003+01:00

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

2010-10-12T14:49:00.002+01:00

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

2010-10-11T19:11:00.003+01:00

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

2010-10-03T07:58:00.004+01:00

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 !

2010-09-25T18:20:00.018+01:00

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

2010-09-15T11:06:00.004+01:00

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

2010-09-01T17:59:00.004+01:00

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

2010-09-01T15:40:00.002+01:00

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 !

2010-08-22T13:31:00.009+01:00

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

2010-08-18T17:46:00.003+01:00

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

2010-08-09T17:34:00.003+01:00

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

2010-07-20T18:54:00.004+01:00

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

2010-07-18T10:39:00.003+01:00

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

2010-07-17T12:39:00.006+01:00

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 !

2010-07-10T12:45:00.006+01:00

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

2010-07-01T10:54:00.008+01:00

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

2010-06-25T11:15:00.006+01:00

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 !

2010-06-23T00:37:00.004+01:00

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 !

2010-06-18T22:28:00.012+01:00

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

2010-06-17T11:25:00.011+01:00

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 ?

2010-06-14T11:18:00.001+01:00

Heroic mode made easy

2010-06-09T09:33:00.004+01:00

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

2010-06-08T16:47:00.002+01:00

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 !

2010-05-30T20:21:00.003+01:00

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

2010-05-30T19:52:00.005+01:00

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

2010-05-24T15:11:00.003+01:00

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

2010-05-23T09:51:00.002+01:00

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

2010-05-21T08:31:00.003+01:00

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 ?

2010-05-18T10:05:00.006+01:00

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

2010-05-13T15:39:00.006+01:00

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 !

2010-05-09T17:29:00.007+01:00

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

2010-05-06T19:52:00.003+01:00

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

2010-04-30T09:54:00.004+01:00

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.

Some LOTRO for a change

2010-04-29T12:18:00.007+01:00

My adventures in the land of JRR Tolkien have been peaceful. Me and two IRL friends have been leveling about 1 hour/day, when all the kids (and wives) are in bed, and while far east stock exchanges are not trembling :)

This means I'm now a proud level 38 minstrel elf girl, named Janariel, collecting a few achievements.. or should I say deeds.
The big advantage of deeds over achievements is that you can use the deeds to enhance specific traits that might be good for your class. Instead, in WoW, you do all those achievements for.. the insanity of doing them and feeling well :)
So, you do deeds, enhance traits, equip them, use them in sets when appropriate, and therefore you become allmighty.

Another nice thing that LOTRO has is the bunch of different quests with elite mobs you can do, which is what we three wanted, when we decided to skip DDO for LOTRO.

In comparison, WoW is much more soloable than LOTRO. And easier too. As a minstrel, with healing and CC(fear), I can attack 2 mobs, 3 if I'm pushing my luck, but more means I'm dead meat. In WoW, I remember as a warlock, pulling 5-6 mobs and happily getting away with it.

But back to elite'ing, you've got:
- Skirmishes, ie, closed instances that you can do solo, in a small(3x) or large (6x) fellowship, that reward XP and medals for gear. Instead, WoW has only closed instances for fixed 5 ppl. If you can't find a healer, or a tank, you cannot do them. In LOTRO, you can adjust the skirmish to your party.
- Closed instances, with specific quests inside, just like WoW, but a tank is not mandatory (at least, doesnt look like that to me) although a healer.. indeed is.
- Open instances (as I call them), caves and such things with elite mobs where you are inside but can suddenly find other ppl too. And they are *huge*.
- A lot, and I mean, a lot of out-in-the-wild elite quests/chain quests, that require a small fellowship to do them. I'd say, 5-10 times more than WoW, which sometimes feature an elite at the end of chain, and that's it.

We'll see when it gets to raiding, how it will be.

This week we killed our first rare named elite, a huge dragon that was patrolling near the Mother Drake (another elite dragon) in the North Downs. It took a while for us 3 to control the drake breathing and to position myself between both the drake and her kin, while my fellow comrades smashed one.

One is a guardian, with the tanking role, the other is a champion with the AoE role, so the only ranged is myself, when not healing. But we're bound to get a Rune Keeper to play with us soon.

Next stop is Rivendell ! Aragorn, will you please wait for us!!!!!!!

Oh well, back to WoW :)

PS: This week I finally got Sartharion down + 3D in 25', so I'm a Twilight Vanquisher!

Up the ladder...painfully slow

2010-04-25T18:44:00.002+01:00

Long time no write. Not much to write, as I've been doing some sparse achievements, and having fun with LOTRO.

Last night, we *finally* started our wipe fest learning the Lich King fight, in a good mood, after doing 11/12 ICC10 in <4 hours the day before.

Saw a lot of videos, a lot of different strategies for the different phases, and tbh, it seems easy on video, but until everyone sticks to a strategy and knows it, it's not. Really. The reason is simple: 1 mistake = wipe.

Phase 1 is not a dps race, so they say, but it is. The reason is that the LK must come down to 72% very fast, so that ppl can finish the Shambling Horrors at will. And the nuking, imho, shouldn't be done with dpsing them, but simply moving the Necrotic Plague up the stack ladder, by *NOT* dispelling them until the affected person is behind the mob, or that will decrease the effect of the plague. If the plagued mob is one of the ghouls, that's best, as it will be killed and the plague will stack, nearly 1-shotting the horror(s). But for this to work, there can't be many ghouls, as the plague will move between them but there must be at least 1-2, so it can stack before moving to the horror. That means some AoE must be done to speed up the killing of plagued ghouls. Single-targetting the Horrors seems like a total waste of time until the LK is at 71-72%.
Btw, we had our OT and MT spread apart, ie, MT AoE didnt seem to dps the mobs near the OT and vice-versa. On the videos I've seen, MT and OT seemed to be close enough so that the melee dps and MT AoE would damage the mobs around the OT too, although far enough so that the incoming plagued person leaving the plague near the Horror would not cause the jumping of the plague to anyone in the MT area. Have to check that.

We managed to move to the transition with 3 Horrors killed, and most times we actually had to wait 10s before the 3rd horror would spawn so I think it's feasible to have only 2 Horrors and then nuke the LK, a sitting duck at 72%.

Then we have the transition phase, or Phase 1.5.

Theoretically, ppl split in 2 or 3 groups. We did it with 2 groups, 1 group with both tanks and the melee dps and the other with ranged+healers. We had only 1-melee so it was not balanced. I've seen several videos where the person being raging-spirited would move to the tanks for an easier taunt, and to avoid that he silenced other players. We didn't to it that way, we kept dpsing Raging Spirits and the tanks would taunt the Spirits to them.
This *is* a dps race, but it has its problems, because the Spirits silenced our tank (dunno if that should happen), meaning, sunders/taunts delayed, meaning aggroing dps. I myself had that problem once, when the mob was at 52% (weird, ha?). We had one mostly(?) idle ranged (hunter) nuking the 6K hp (?) ice spheres.
So that left 4 dps to kill 3 Raging Spirits in 60 secs (and the 1st one does NOT spawn at t=0, it spawns at t=5 or so, that was my feeling but lets consider t=0)

Each Raging Spirit has 752k, meaning we need 37600 dps to get all 3 down in 60 secs.
Lets assume 4 dps + 0.2 dps for each tank + 0.1 dps (for the sphere dps)

So, requirement is about 8.3k dps for the poor 4 dpsers. That's a bit too much. Of course, if the sphere dps helps, that will help a lot. That might have been one of our probs, as we came out of the transition always with the 3rd Raging Spirit at 90% HP or so, so that was crap.

And now... Phase 2.

Absolutely first thing to do, when going in, do *NOT* go towards any incoming sphere that might have popped up at the last second. Kill it from the edge and *THEN* go in. We never had a problem with that, but..
First thing to do, and we failed several times: *MOVE* to near the middle, and *STACK* while waiting for the Val'kyr.
Second thing to do, do *NOT* dps the LK until the raging spirit is down.
Second thing to do, when the Valkyr shows up (it takes a bit of time to pickup the target), start nuking it, forget about the Spirit, and slow it down.
Third thing to do, start spreading (in my case, teleport out of the middle <= Create a portal near the edge, and that edge better be the way you go when you(lock) are picked up, so you can save yourself from falling by teleporting, which means, Portal must be in range).
IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN WETHER TWO VALKYRS MAY COME UP WITHOUT A DEFILE. CHECK LK CASTS.

We utterly failed at spreading. DMB bars do not help, as it is only a guide. It shouts that "LK is casting Defile". By then you better be moving out of the middle and spreading. It seems easy. Dunno if it is or not, because I never got Defiled. But I saw ppl being defiled in the middle and then, because others were in the vicinity, the pool immediately extended to about 90% of the available area. Brutal !

I think this failure has to do with our dps being a bit low on the Valkyrs, lots of time they send us through the edge, meaning something was wrong. It's weird as we had 4 ranged dpsers. Still.. as we spend too much time with the Valkyrs, our focus waned and .. defeat.

A good solution (so they say) seems to be to have the LK as /focus , so you can see its target bar while you are nuking the Val'kyr.

The best we got in 10 tries was LK at 57% (?).

Not bad.

WTB ICC 10 HC to get a damn decent weapon and trinket....Muradin's Spyglass is cursed for me... 10+ runs and no drop :(

Bitch down, ICC10 11/12 !!!

2010-04-11T19:31:00.002+01:00

After 6 weeks of perfecting, we downed Sindragosa today.
I was away for 2 weeks, but this week, I came with a killer instinct. And nothing like a bottle of wine for lunch to relax the muscles and prepare for the pwnage.

That P3 is a sh*t, when instability is combined with Mystic buffed. But we did it.

Lich King is next.

We did a single try on Arthas before finishing the weekend on a high, and it seems fun, much more my kind of fight, with multiple targets, target switching, fast reflexes needed, but not that "pay attention to multiple (3) debuffs at the same time" thing.

Valithria 25 down ! ICC25 8/12 , ICC10 10/12

2010-04-10T18:17:00.004+01:00

After nearly two weeks of pause, Easter and all, I went back to raiding, and helped RGC down Valithria in 25 men. That was fun.

Then we went to ICC10 for our late-night clear and we did a funny achievement, the Gunship 10 I'm on a boat !

April Fools and Sartharion twilight

2010-04-01T16:10:00.005+01:00

Years later, I finally downed Sartharion 10 with 3 drakes alive, also completing the Volcano achievement.

No it's not an April Fools joke.
But this one is :)

On the dark side, yesterday there was an ICC25 run that I couldn't attend, since I wont be available the whole 3 days, and guess what, of course, the two items I've been searching, boots and trinket, dropped.

And then ppl ask me why do I have so much DKP... because I have nothing to spend it on ARRGGH !

ICC25 Bloodprinces and Rotface smashed.. and GLORY

2010-03-22T09:28:00.011Z

Last week we 1-shotted every boss up to Sindragosa in ICC10 (getting pro here) but then..... mnhamenhamenham... we're still stuck. We changed the tactics to match the tanskpot hard mode video, having the two Icy Tombs at the bottom of the stairs, alternating sides in P3, but the problem remains. I myself find it insane to simultaneously watch out for:
1 - Mystic buffet ( I died on last try while Icy Tombed with 2 Buffets and 17K hit damage !)
2 - Instability (5 or above equals death) to stop ALL casts (even Life tap triggers it)
3 - Being a frost beacon
4 - dpsing Sindra
5 - Setting a portal in useful spot but still in range of Sindra to run away at frost breath (between the two portals should work)
6 - Checking Mystic buffet timer to see when or not to dps the f* tombs.
7 - Get my pet behind a tomb since the last time I watched he was still living but with... 22 buffets !

The result is a miserable dps while keeping some survivability, or a good dps while having a miserable survivability.

All in all, Sindra P3 is a big mess !!!! Help wanted !!!

As to good news, we downed Rotface in ICC25, it was just a question of some ppl understanding the tactics, since it doesn't require that much gear/dps.

Better still, I was able to successfully tank Keleseth in ICC25 and stay alive to then end with no felhunter deaths, so we pwned them.

My bad luck continues, gunship doesn't drop the crit trinket, Marrowgarr doesn't drop the weapon and worse still, no one drops any damn boots: So I keep on using a lvl 200 trinket and TOC10 boots :(

EDIT: Nearly forgot..... I completed Glory of the Hero !!!!!! YAY !!!! No more Heroics... except that I still need the Needy achiev :(

10/12 ICC10 and 5/12 ICC25, stuck at Sindragosa

2010-03-15T15:19:00.002Z

This weekend we pwned every ICC10 boss, including 2-shotting Blood Queen Lathaniel, until Sindragosa.

The queen is so easy, just set a bite priority, then rock your dps, get together when linked, and spread during air phase... oh and run away on swarming shadows.

Sindragosa... that's a completely different matter.

The first phases, ground and air, are very easy. Stop when debuffedx5, use teleport to get away when pulled, and during air phase, spread out, get away from marked ppl, and slowly dps tombs, while rotating to LOS the bombs.

As to P3... a nightmare. It seems easy in theory, ie, when marked, run to a spot, everyone else (?) dps the tomb while LOS'ing the boss to clear the debuff... run away when pulled.. rinse and repeat.

In practice... it's way worse.
Or the healers are LOS from the tanks and they die, or the dps are to slow to dps the tomb, or to move away, and pretty soon there are 2 tombs, or the Instability soon kills someone that forgot to stop dps, or someone gets pulled and does not get away fast enough... miriads of problems.

We tried a few times on Sat and 10 times on Sun. No way.

The best we could do was 20%.. we tried with the standard positioning, ie, Sindra with the tail to the stairs, and then with Sindra head near the stairs, and the spot in such a way that the healers dont get LOS to the tanks, but neither worked.

I wonder why...

9/12 ICC10 and 5/12 ICC25 after Dream raid

2010-03-11T09:03:00.008Z

This week we overpushed in ICC10 to get some progress. And progress we did. We downed Putricide and Valkyria Dreamwalker, both bosses are actually easy as long as you stick to a strict schedule.

For Putricide, always walk south and north, and dont stay near the middle during the green-rooting slime attack, to give time for the dps both to dps and to close-in on you, just in case. That's my best advice. And ofc stay away of every sh*t on the floor.

For Valkyria, prioritize your adds, with Blazing Skeletons as absolutely top priority, then supressors (unless someone is assigned to be in their neighborhood), then the Archmages, then Blistering Zombies (kite them from tank), and finally the Abominations... and kick your tank if he doesnt do good AoE when the abomination little spawns come out, they 2-shot hit you if you aggro them.
Nature res might help... that's all folks.

At the Blood Council, I tanked Keleseth again and I performe well enough to get ourselves the Orb Whisperer achievement, as I never got more than 25K spell hit, meaning 3 orbs or more were on me all the time. Well, that's supposed to be like that, if the range tank doesnt slack hehe.

Finally, we tried Sindragosa. The fight is insanely easy. The only thing that's a bit tricky is when ppl get frozen too much near the wall, and it's hard to see the direction where the bombs are coming from. It's also a bit tricky to match the destroying of the frozen tomb with the end of the bombing. We wiped twice and called it a night.

As to ICC25..we're stuck on Rotface, and this week we got stuck on Festergut as some impatient idiots left the guild, and they were doing good dps. Last week we had killed Fester with 2 secs to spare, this week we failed with Fester ending with... 50K on our best try. Crap !

Finally, an important achievement completed, I'm Exalted with 40 reputations.

On the LOTRO front, I'm enjoying it ! Luckily my trial-ended but a welcome back week started, so I'm getting 3 weeks of free play. I'm now a lvl 24 Minstrel and kicking ass. I like the deed/trait thing, it's a different breeze from a talent based spec. And the graphics are stunning, Bree Land is amazing. I'm getting ready for my first instance, Great Barrows, looking forward to do it with my n00b fellowship, 1 healer, 1 dps, 1 tank LOL

Wee Festergut 25 down !

2010-03-05T13:08:00.004Z

Last night, the damn boss that was keeping us from going forward in the Citadel came down for good.

The Strength of Wrynn, a buff that will go from 5% to 30%, set by Blizzard to allow us poor casuals to see WOTLK content, helped us. But we finished with a few seconds to spare, so I wonder if it would come down without the buff. Probably not. Gah.

Anyways, he's down, and last night we tried Rotface 25. It seems exactly the same as in ICC10, and it gets harder to the end. Our best try was 20%. We'll see tonight.

Must stay away from the Big Ooze, must stay away from the Big Ooze, must stay away from the Big Ooze. Hard to do it when the healer doesnt cure me while I'm waiting by the tank to provide a nice oozie and nothing happens for 5 secs...sooner or later one gets a hit or gets the feet on the green poo and...RIP.

I found a way that works nearly all the time to go for the tank.. simply create a macro that follows him. So when u get the debuff, you just click and there you go.. of course, dont go too near the tank because of the AoE. But just to play safe, keep moving the camera around the check his whereabouts.

Edit: As a lock, I've just found out that the Mutated Infection is Shadow Damage ! Shadow Damage Ha ha ha ! Ok, remember to use Shadow Ward every time I go for the tank, since I can't be dpsing. That's about 3 seconds of free running.

A night at the circus: The Baloon Man

2010-03-01T17:03:00.003Z

Some time has passed since my last topic. Not much progress has been done in ICC.
Well, a little.

In ICC25, we are pwning the first 4 bosses, but can't get past Festergut and its dps race. I'm usually in the top 3, but there are still ppl doing below 6K dps, and that leaves Festergut enraging at 15%. Tactics are fine, everyone now runs to the spores, my portal helps me get back and I nearly don't loose dps except when... a mage by my side activates the mirror images. I'd swear every time they become active, I start to vomit due to getting too close to the bloody images.

We also tried the blood princes in ICC25, I was the baloon man, but oh man, it's hard to move around fetching baloons, when ppl steal them from me, and when the damn knock back occurs 5 secs before keleseth activating, giving me no more time to fetch baloons before I get killed by a 25K Empowered Shadow Lance.

In ICC10, we're easily clearing Festergut, then Rotface.. it's a bit harder, a few wipes, damn oozes and the green sh*t that suddenly pops on the floor when we're right on top of it are damn hard. But we manage.

This week, we did the Blood Princes in ICC10, and again, I was the baloon man. It is so much easier, I managed to get it fine, both staying alive and aggroing with searing pain, so that dps can kill it. Now I have to learn how to also dps while I'm aggroing and pulling baloons. I've been using a few tricks, like a 0/43/28 spec, with soul link and the nether protection, plus a voidwalker for the sacrifice shield and also shadow ward. To pull baloons I'm using rank 1 Curse of Agony, which worked great in ICC and lasts 24 secs. To keep aggro, searing pain, ofc, but some ppl say that decimate works just fine during the 1HP phase.

We also tried Valkyria Dreamwalker, the boss where the healers have to heal the boss while we kill add waves... we healed her up to 77%, so next week she'll come down for sure. I think one missing trick was our hunter using Nature resistance aura. I told it in chat, but I guess it wasn't loud enough :)

So, all in all: 7/12 ICC10 and 4/12 ICC25

Ah, last but not least, we've been trying TOGC25, and... omg it's hard !!! The enraging timer for Icehowl is a pain, we got him to 1% (<300K to go) but it's damn hard.

On a different note, I've now stopped playing Dungeons and Dragons Online, since although it's free to play, our group of 3 (me as bard, and 2 melee friends) has run out of dungeons to do at lvl 6.

So, the last week we've been trying Lord of the Rings Online, and this time, I'm actually liking it. Of course, we will have to pay for it, and tbh, having 3 subscriptions (2 WOW and 1 LOTRO) is overkill for my free time.

I also tried Guild Wars to check, but the game is ugly, looks like an old AION (same company NCBS, actually).

And... I also tried WAR, now that is's also free to play. I bought the game in 2008 and played it for 1 month, but quit because it was too sluggish and with slow fps.

Now I've got an ATI 5770 and I can play at 50FPS with maximum detail, both LOTRO and WAR.

As to Warcraft, it's still a bit of a pain in 25-raids, I have to decrease some things to be able to get 20-30 fps, but it becomes playable then.

Enough talking. Let's play !

Progress indeed 6/12 ICC10 , 3/12 ICC25

2010-02-07T17:49:00.012Z

Well well well, it's been going well the last days. It's exhausting, for sure, but fun.

The last days, I killed Toravon the new (and last?) season boss.
I also, after three bloody years, went into Mount Hyjal and killed Archimonde.
I could see it was a beautiful raid in the old days, in fact the zone should much more used as it is now (locked!). The raid itself seems a bit boring, with waves coming and bosses coming, but then again, it was too easy now, I was doing about 15K AoE damage :)

Archimonde fight seemed also very easy, don't know if they nerfed, as I got several reports of how it still wiped 80-raids, when ppl didnt position properly.

Today Love was in the air, so I headed to SFK and downed a new boss trio, funny and easy to do. Supposedly drops the rocket mount. I once saw that once. Pray :) I never got lucky with the Kodo or headless mount in 2 years.

As to ICC25, on Friday we tried Saurfang, it came down up to 10-20% but then it was not possible to do anything, as soon as a ranged dps died, adds started to stay alive too long, boss healed too much and that was it. Dunno how to fix it tbh, besides getting more dps into the raid. Hopefully the gearing in ICC10 we did on the weekend will help.

So, ICC10. We came, we won. The first four bosses came down with no wipes, everyone showing skill and dps, so I got my 4/* ICC10 achievement easily :)

Then, Plagueworks. Oh boy, much more difficult.

Festergut is a dps race. We wiped a few times, and had some bad luck on spores, as they spawned 2x on ranged or 2x on melee a few times. But down he went.

Then, today: Rotface. Oh man, it's not a dps race, but it's damn hard to focus on aggro-contention, dps, switch sides due to the vomiting, watch for marked on yourself to run to offtank, watch for offtank position, watch for explosion, watch for which place to run in case of explosion. Too many things to watch for.

I did 1 mistake on aggro, as our MT is not exactly an aggro machine, and with Bloodlust at 10 secs and the Discipline Priest spell buff (forgot the name) I got, I went skyrocket aggro, soulshattered, and went again skyrocket, and then... died. HATE THAT :((
And I did 1 little mistake taking a bit long to find the OT after an explosion. Have to train where to go (entrance), but with all the maelstrom, who knows where the entrance lies :))

Anyway, a few wipes later, down he came !

Then we went to see Herr Dr PhD Professor Putricide.

Didn't seem tough, tbh, but it requires huge ranged dps, proper continuous repositioning, and a good knowledge of when to kite, when to stand still, when to hug and when to spread, which side to go, etc. Anyway, I think I will shine there, much more than I will ever shine with Rotface.

Got some gear, like waist, and could have needed a wrist, but didn't.. Hard to check what to need with all the nearly equivalent gear around.

Next week I'll have ICC25 with 2 other >>GS locks (5.6 or so), so my top dps times will be over.

Time to rest, no more raids until Wednesday, I'm tired !

ICC25 Second day - Gettting better

2010-02-05T00:04:00.002Z

Hmm, today was a fun day, except for the part that I get tired like hell after 2 hours. The last 90 mins are an excrutiating pain, although fun. I'm too old for this :)

Anyways, Lady Deathwhisper came down after 3 attempts. I managed to find myself always going top dps, as I barely have to move to switch between dpsing the boss shield and the fanatics. The 2nd part seems fairly easy, as the ghosts can be spotted in flight, so they give more than enough time to move away, and they despawn fast too.

Now, the funny part. After we went for the gunship battle, I found out that I had been wearing my Chef's cooking hat, instead of my T9 4-set-bonus maker gear !!!

Anyway, dps races are ugly, I don't like them... except when I get to be on top at the end, using a Chef's hat and missing a tier gear and bonus! Then it IS funny !

[Slamming an old bearded head on the table]

It's also gratifying to see that my class is able to countepart some weak gear (I still use my old lvl 200 +haste/+crit trinkets). My class, meaning, my class, not my class. Got it ?

I got a necklace roll from the gunship, although I died at the beginning, although I think I did what I could do, but the damn mob came for me even with soulshatter, meaning tank hadn't touch it after about 5 seconds. Tough luck. It was good to see the fight, though, how ppl use the packs from ship to ship to kill the mage while the tanks controls the chief,

Finally, we tried Saurfang, and boy was he close (<20% or so), but not enough. He gets enraged at the end, and since he always healed a bit after a while, it was not doable. I still did well, I think, doing the most damage on the adds and coming 2nd overall dpser. Shadowflame becomes useful here, since the CD is fast and the stuns effective on multiple adds.

One of the tries, I decided to switch my +84 haste trinket for the +84 crit, bringing my haste down from 550 to 460, and ... what a difference (for the worse). I did about less 1K dps. So... no doubt, +500-600 haste is the way to go.

I also found out that with more haste, I'm really using a lot (a LOT) of mana, and the pool is going down very fast, even with replenishment from other raiders. May be it's time to go for 0/13/58 fom 3/13/55 and get +446 hit.

My new ICC25 necklace will help.

Fingers x-ed for tomorrow.

First RGC-Silvermoon raid

2010-02-04T08:07:00.005Z

Last night (bad choice, patch day, with immense lag spikes until 22h) was the first official ICC-25 raid.

Result ? Some mixed feelings.

People with will to do it, but a little underdps, a few ppl that were coming for the first time without having looked at the strategy.

One thing I didn't know about, and costed me 2 tries with highest damage taken, which was that coldflame can be mitigated by staying in the boss's hit box. However, this brings melee range, and therefore Saber Lash. We never did like that in ICC25 on Chromaggus. But we had better healing there, I think.

Overall, I got a lot of damage, and tbh, I don't know why. Too much Flame, too much Lash. The only thing I know, and that's weird, is that I had vigilance from my tank and during those 5 tries I got top damage taken (all but 1). At the 6th, we killed it, the warrior tank was replaced by a paladin, I lost vigilance and... I was no longer top damage taken, I was 8th or so. At the kill, I messed up with my macro, so I ended up missing a lot of Spikes :(

Weird. Vigilance lessens my damage taken. So was I 3% worse ? OMG !

Anyay, my dps was not bad, I was top 5, ex-aequo with a hunter. What was also weird was that the 3 rogues were the top 3 dps, with one of them with a similar GS.

I wonder what is going on.

At the end we tried Deathwhisper, (pulled all mobs at once and I my Rain of Fire come on top, which says that it's not so bad) and I made a misjudgement, so didnt start immediately dpsing the adds. After a bit, there was a loose one killing our top healer, so, bye. But I also found out that I dpsed the boss's shield on top by miles. So my rotation seems fine, even when switching to mobs.

I heard a comment from a guildie about the melee's reflect shield, and it's bad (when it' up) if a caster hits it, as it reflects to the whole raid with massive dmg. Have to check that, don' remeber that issue being raised on Chromaggus, or ever. Or may be he was talking about the need for the melee to do massive dmg to the shield in order to break it for us casters to hit the mob.

Tonight we go again. She'll come down, I swear to Elune.

I'm getting out of Chromaggus !

2010-01-26T13:09:00.003Z

Good news. RGC is moving out of Chromaggus, to Silvermoon.
So, I'm going with them. Raiding is not over yet.

Blizz opened up some more transfers to Chromaggus, and indeed today I spotted an entire guild that moved from Stromscale. They seem to be international/greek based.
But the environment continues to be very bad, a lot of unpolite, rude idiots, etc.

Anyway, my problem is now.. my bank, a lvl 20 char with his own guild and a lot of bank tabs, and all my alts :(

Shall I move them all ?

It's a bit of money, but nothing compared to what some jerk spent the last days, transferring from server to server so he could do the weekly on every server, in order to farm frosts and get a T10 asap... some dudes have too much money on their hands !!!

As to Lightbringer and my lovely healing bovine (how gay is that!), I tried some more HCs. I even did Occulus HC. Ok, I'm getting some seriously geared tanks, some are so imba I simply don't heal them, I just heal the dps and put the shield on them. I also tried VoA25, and boy it was fun but it's time for me to get a raid view, healbot, etc. Things for an idle future. Made me think about Portucale and our 25-portuguese-raid killing in TK when I was healing with Tarithel.

My healing gear is improved, >4K GS now, >+2K healing, 13 epics with so little effort!
But some things I must do better. One of them is thatI keep forgetting to use bloodlust e.g. on the last fightable boss. It does help.
Next target is healing TOC5 and ICC5 heroics. That'll be super !

Healing is fun

2010-01-25T18:27:00.002Z

Most of the time, it is. You feel much more powerful tanking or healing than dps'ing.
You're critical, that's true, but if you're good, you know you can depend on you, and others can depend on you. With dpsing, since CC'ing has disappeared from WoW, you don't feel that anymore.

That said, I've been healing with Clarabela in the new ICC5 in normal, even did an heroic or two, but learned that I can get geared by running TOC and the new ICC5 only. I've now got 10 epics, and counting.

As to the warlock... it's so sad, the guild is empty, and will probably go down soon. Whatever. I'm sure when the Summer comes, there'll be holdiays and ppl going afk and then there'll be time for me to enter a Summer guild or pay to get to Arthas and kill it, for the sake of achievements. Chromaggus stopped being fun, and tbh, I needed a dps break for a bit. Sad, as I had 5.2K GS and was ready to pwn ICC10.

What I'm also learning is that, statisticwise... horde is sooooooooo much more mature than alliance. You get a lot of good geared ppl that don't act like idiots. Lightbringer H trade channel looks like heaven compared with Chromaggus A channel.

Btw, this weekend I had some time free so... I joined "For the Horde" and killed the 4 ally kings. Traitor :)

Last topic: Halls of reflection.. it's silly, but most ppl are doing the encounter staying behind the LK, as it is easier. Don't know if it can be done in HC, but in normal it seems that mobs do come at a slower pace. Anyway, silly.

Tanking and Healing

2010-01-24T09:31:00.006Z

Back I am. After a little illness pause:

Given my guild seems to be on a pause, I decided to level my healing and tanking chars up to 80, and to have some fun without the burden of responsability that comes with having a 4 year character with 200 played days (OMG) and nearly 8K achiev.

That said, Clarabela is now 80, after leveling in instances healing only, and Morkin is now 77, tanking (I'm actually liking it, although it seems a bit more stressful than healing, as the activity must be higher).

But now that I'm 80 with a healing char, totally blue geared from the Northrend Dungeons, I thought it would be easy to switch to heroics, as100% of all dps that switch to 80 do.

Forget it !

Even healing normal Forge of Souls (may be I got a wrong group) is hard, and heroics seem out of the question, at least TOC HC.

I'm about +1400 healing gear, with nearly 15K HP and 15K mana.

I turned Northrend Dungeonmaster easily, but TOC normal still is a bit of a pain, depending on the tank and dpsers, with me doing 2200 hpr or so and the rest of the party doing <1500 dps.

To darken things up, TOC normal is hard to gather, since most DPS run immediately to heroics, TOC included, as they can happily slacker while the rest of the party does twice their own. But a healer CAN'T do that. Well, TOC normal has some good trinkets and that's what keeps those guys going there, lucky us healers.

I'm learning this as my horde guild master got an 80 in the same day I did, and he's now epic geared, while I still have not a single epic (ok a bit of bad luck in my 4-5 TOC runs)

Something is wrong with all this.

EDIT: after a lucky FoS and TOC where I greeded&got +hit spell items and cloth items, plus a resto mail chest, I now have +1521 heal.

SDD revisited

2010-01-16T20:26:00.001Z

I can't believe this.

Yesterday I went with the guild to ICC25. Unfortunately only about 15 were from RGC, we pugged so the others, and they were good ones.

We downed Marrowgar25 and then wiped 2-3 times in Lady Deathwhisper, the best try we finished phase 1 but phase 2 started while adds respawned and a couple of dead. So.. wipe.

Today, I logged for ICC10 and found out that our best dps are moving to a hardcore guild, while leaving their alts for the rest of us, poor idiots that can't dps, to do something with them in their free,non-hardcore time.

Well, I couldn't get the GM online, but it seems he knows about it.

Anyway, during the process, several other guys left the guild, even moved server, namely a hunter which seemed to do amazing dps.

Long story short, Savory Deviate Delight(SDD) = Reset Gaming Clan(RGC) = most guilds with 25% idiots that don't know what to do in raids + 25% of hardcore gamers that are in a casual guild so they look imba and their ego explodes + 25% of serious casual gamers like me + 25% of whatever.

So... 1 day after I got promoted to member, it's nearly game over, I don't think I'm gonna raid ICC again with this guild.

I mean, isn't there a bunch of cool, mature, not-egocentric ppl that wants to join casually 2+ nights a week and see content, for the fun of it ?

LFGuild again ...

TOC 10 HC made easy

2010-01-09T12:28:00.003Z

Raid log here.

Yesterday there was no ICC25, the guild we were supposed to go with bailed out. So I was invited to a TOC 10 HC.

God knows how my old guild struggled to down the Beasts of Northrend in Heroic with our imba healer druid, and how we failed with Jaraxxus due to lack of dps.

This time, it was easier. We cruised the first three bosses, my dps was ok, although I went in with OpenGL configured, to check if it was better in fds than D3D, and... it's not. It's way worse, <20 fps, and that reflected in my dps too. Damn !

Anyway, we only failed once in the Twins, because me and another dps died of orbs, which do a lot more damage now. Kick myself.

And finally, Anub. Anub in HC is a "little" different, specially in what relates to waiting for the off-tank to pull "both" adds to the frost patch. I failed once, when one of the adds submerged and later respawned and went straight to me, having used the soulshatter because our tank, the same from our old guild, still has some aggro-making problems (that reminds me, have to talk with him about how he can solve that).
Another thingie Anub HC has is... the kiting. In Phase 2, there are only 3 patches available (3x2 for 2 submerges), so the raid has to move in the opposite direction of the pursuiting spike, from top to bottom, and then from bottom to top. The first 3 spikes are stopped by patches (1 on the bottom, where the off-tank tanked the 2+2 adds, and 2 on top), and the 4th, it it comes to that, is saved by hands of protection. 3 of us, the "fresh ones", me included didn't know about that. I had seen videos, but every guild seemed to have different strategies. Lucky me, I got enough time to see how they did it in RGC before being spiked, but the other two didn't have the same luck, so they died.
The last thingie Anub HC has is... in P3, the Penetrating Cold. That's something for the healers do worry about, and seems to be very hard, because our HP is supposed to be very low (10-20% max) and to have a sudden burst damage that kills us fast may be hard to handle. I died once.
Long story short, we didn't make a full TOC10-HC run, but 4 out of 5 was good enough.

The only sad part was me loosing the roll for the 245 heroic off-hand to our imba mage that has the ICC10 251 off-hand equipped. But then again, I'm not playing for gear, I'm playing for fun, and I did have fun in TOC 10 HC.

On another topic.... 3.3 raid talent respeccing.
1- Afflition seems to be much better now, and same with Demonology. Personally, I don't like demonology in raids, because it forces the caster to go into melee range for the immolation aura to help in dps, and that sucks, as it requires me to know about melee positioning. But afflition.... with long 25% burn phases... yum. On the other hand, Curse of Elements seems to be mandatory for our raid casters, if we can't get a +13% damage, and in 10-raids, I'll be forced to give up CoA, which is a primary curse for Affliton.
2 - Respeccing from 3/13/55 to 0/13/58. The 3 points for suppression suck, that's for sure. But requiring 368 instead of 446 gives a lot of flexibility in what relates to gear. However... with this new guild, a few specs like Boomkin or SP seem to show up, so it'll help me getting the +3% hit, although I don't like that very much because of "sudden deaths" and the vanishing of the effect in midfight.

Last... DK Unholyness and the stacking (or not) with Curse of Elements.
AFAIK, it does not stack. However, our imba mage wanted an unholy DK in raid yesterday because... it gives the 13% dmg... I told him I could do it with CoE, but he says it stacks. I could have started an argument, but then againt... what if something changed, and he's right ?
Better check it , or TEST it. So I will.
Common sense and a LOT of posting says it does not stack, in the same way replenishment does not stack, also taking in consideration Blizzard based posts in forums about how they want raids to "bring the person, not the class", so limiting as much as possible the class-uniqueness buffs.

Raiding for dps...

2010-01-08T11:30:00.007Z

Raid log here.
Raids started yesterday on the new guild. We did a TOC25 with a few pugs (5+), complete in 1.5 hours, with 0 wipes, and 0 deaths (from me). I got no lucky Trophy, but no worries.

The guild seems cheerful, and committed.

What worried me a bit was the kind of talk I've heard during the raid... dps praising.

Everytime I hear about dps races, I laugh. Everytime I'm on top of dps, I NEVER talk about it. That's my nature. I wait for others to comment, and then I'll answer something, usually a joke, but nothing about how good I am, or how I need competiton otherwise it's boring, etc. World of Warcraft is not meant to be a dps fight during raids, you're supposed to fight the boss, the best way and the funniest way you can. It's all about fun, not mechanical key triggering. Besides, some classes have special duties like interrupts, CC, and players have different gear levels, so the Recount top dps list does not reflect who did the best job.

What I saw last night was exactly the opposite. Most dps had their eyes glued to recount and were fighting for the top. That's good in one way, but bad as hell as soon as discrimination kicks in. And it did kick in, for locks (in general), some talking of why Valkyr fight had no locks on top... and then some comments, that I didn't hear so well, about how easy it is to play a lock if you know how to play it (sigh) and to get a lock on top.
At the same time, Activity log was displayed for the fight, and I was nearly on top, while some top dps had their activity log last. A quick gear check shows.. wooooow !
No comments...
In general, I'd say dps fights are not at all good for staying alive in new fights, but are ok in farm raids, since some players need some competition fun.

I also heard some vents about demonology locks and how good they are.. and about Unholy DK's and how important they are because of +13% damage, a talk which seemed to have developped in the day before, meaning, these guys have been raiding but are not sure about some class contributions.

What I also checked yesterday, is that my 9500GT is not able to cope with 25-raids very well. The FPS slows down, specially in the Valkyr fight, to about 10-15 fps, and that surely affects in my dps.

So.. a new card is needed, but I've got not enough power for that. So, a new power supply is required, me thinks. Time to think about spending 150 EUR ! And.. ATI or Nvidia ???

Tonight we'll have ICC25, and I'll be able to see some new fights, hopefully.
I don't remember being specially strong in Morrowgar10, but I'll go and study a bit in the Warlock's Den, may be there are some more tips for dps improving, besides those I saw. Anyway, Spikes in ICC25 are not gonna be nice to impaled ppl. I hope the dps "racers" will be able to retarget quickly and get the spikes down.

On a new beginning

2009-12-21T17:30:00.006Z

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

2009-12-16T10:44:00.002Z

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

2009-12-14T15:54:00.002Z

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

2009-12-11T08:08:00.004Z

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)

2009-12-10T12:06:00.004Z

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

2009-12-09T11:38:00.004Z

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.