Tuesday (8 Dec) - Patch 3.3 - Fall of the Lich King
Maybe I just never noticed, but I don't recall ever seeing a patch that had it's own title. The last expansion pack for WoW was called "Wrath of the Lich King." So, it is a measure of how significant this patch is that Blizz would name it "Fall of the Lich King."
Icecrown Citadel's Frozen Throne is the home of the Lich King himself in this new 10/25 man dungeon that will also introduce Tier 10 gear. Before seeking out the Lich King, however, Icecrown Citadel's Frozen Halls offer three five man dungeons leading into the Frozen Throne. Assuming the game is playable today, I'm certain groups will be flooding into those dungeons, whether geared for them or not. Wild hopes to be a part of that rush to get a taste of the new dungeons.
The opportunity for dungeon crawling also got a boost as groups and raids can now be formed across realms. Blizzard already has cross-realm action in the pvp battlegrounds. Now it's available for dungeons and raids. The immediate advantage may be to folks like JB and DER, as we may be able to more quickly form groups from the larger pool of players. The hard core PUG leaders of Silvermoon server will face an interesting challenge - they'll have more players to choose from (and some would say, dupe and ninja from), but at the same time those players forced to choose PUGs as they had few other options, should now have a lot more choices of who to join.
On the addon front Blizzard has taken aim at addons that manage quests. Philly in particular is interested in seeing how well the new quest tracker works. She currently uses two quest addons called Lighthearted (which provides in game quest tips that players post in wowhead) and Questhelper (which provides mapping directions to quest locations and suggests the order to accomplish them in the shortest time). Philly doubts the new quest tracker will replace either one of those addons.
There is a change that could have a significant effect on low level characters, adding increased health and mana regeneration to speed up levelling. The increased regeneration falls back to normal by level 15, however, too late to be any use for Andro and Jocelyne, who are at or on the cusp of level 15 now. The two might still get some benefit from more favorable spell casting up to level 20, but Andro, a warrior, won't see much difference.
There are multiple and significant changes to almost every class. I don't think that talent points will have to be re-established, but there are good and bad changes for everyone.
For druids, Wild's battle rez cooldown has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. For some fights Wild could be able to rez two people instead of just one, and a battle rez should be up and ready for almost every encounter now. Wild's AoE heal, Tranquility, has also had it's cooldown reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10. For moonkin, the powerful Eclipse proc has been "adjusted" to ensure that eclipse procs won't overlap each other. For those who knew how to take advantage of that, it will mean less DPS. Others say that, coupled with nerfs to the Tier 8 set bonuses, moonkin DPS is now broken - again. Among other problems is the fact that most damage comes off of the Eclipse procs, which are of limited duration, and any interruptions or need to move takes time off that proc, reducing damage. Procs are also subject to significant randomness, and bad luck will greatly reduce a moonkin's numbers. Moonkin can still put up big numbers - if they get lucky with proc rate, can stand still, and never get bothered. Right.
Philly wants to interject a comment - Nice buffs! Yes, shadow priests get some lovin' from Blizz, with buffs to Devouring plague, Mind Flay, Shadowform, and Vampiric Embrace. And Philly can now cast her shield on any friendly target, even if they aren't in her party or raid. Wow.
Shaman JB got a buff, too, with Blizz turning one of the shaman's totem's into a spell, Fire Nova. Now JB can drop a fire totem and still be able to use Fire Nova as an AoE, and does not even have to be in line of sight of the target. Nice.
Hot off the presses! Moonkin do get some love! I just learned that the Eclipse proc change included changes to Wrath and Starfire, the two spells that are used during eclipse procs. During eclipse Wrath damage has been increased from 30% to 40%, and Starfire's crit was also raised from 30% to 40%. Go Blizz!
And there is much, much more. But maybe the server is up. Bye!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Saturday (5 Dec) - Old School AQ40
Saturday (5 Dec) - Old School AQ40
Note - Yes, I'm going to cover the path 3.3 changes, but if I don't get this posted now I'm going to get too far behind.
The Temple of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ40) is an old school level 60 forty man raid. Opening the gates of this massive instance required a World Event quest series called "The Scepter of the Shifting Sands" that the entire server could participate in. There is a completely different and smaller 20 man raid that came into being along with AQ40 called the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ20) that Wild and the guild spent literally months running. We were very successful in AQ20, but AQ40 was a titanic struggle. I'd have to go back to those old posts to be completely accurate, but I don't think the guild ever got much past the first boss, Skeram, and I know for sure that no AQ40 raid that Wild was in ever defeated Skeram (Back in the day when Wild's luck demanded that I never be present at a first boss kill :-) ). AQ40 was a rarity in that Blizz decided to make the first boss extraordinarily difficult, sort of a gatekeeper/gear check guarding the great goodies that awaited those who could get past him. Only the final boss, C'Thun, was tougher.
AQ40 was the end game raid dungeon when it was released, eclipsing Blackwing Lair as the best and most difficult raid in the game (until the original Naxxramas was opened). Mostly what Wild remembers of AQ40 was wipe after wipe. The only loot that Wild ever got from there were the bug mounts that could only be ridden inside AQ40, dropped by the very tough trash leading to Skeram. To give readers an idea of just how old this place is in WoW years, let me remind you that the newest dungeons reward Tier 9 and 9.5 gear. AQ40 offered five piece Tier 2.5 gear.
There were only three guildies signed up for the raid, which by design was being run on the birthday of the raid leader, who was also our Guild Leader. I didn't think I would be able to make it, but when the 4pm start time drew near the chores were done and Wild was available. Other guildies popped in, and when Wild got his Summons to the shifting sands of southern Silithus to the far south of the continent of Kalimdor, there were seven of us. "Do you want me healing or moonkin?" Wild asked as he arrived. "Only need one healer, at least at the beginning," the GL told Wild. H-priest was the other potential healer, so Wild immediately volunteered for DPS. "Cool, I'm already in moonkin spec."
Wild was in the middle of revamping his moonkin gear set when he decided to join the AQ40 raid, but he had to put that aside and went with his existing set. We had two tanks, one healer, and the rest of us were DPS. The 7th member of the raid was a last minute invitee who logged in with other plans in mind. Surveydrood was cajoled into joining us and decided to bring his moonkin. That gave Wild a great gauge to compare himself with. Surveydrood was probably the best moonkin in the guild.
Now think about this for a bit. AQ40 is a level 60 dungeon (with the elite bosses at the equivalent of level 63), granted, but tuned to be able to tear the heads off of a forty man raid. We were all level 80, most of us draped in Ulduar and ToC epic gear, but there were only seven of us. The GL figured it would be enough. Provided we could get by Skeram.
The entrance to AQ40 is through a sand swept archway, up a longer series of wide steps, a right turn, and then more steps. Sand is piled everywhere, half submerging the above ground areas. A long ride finally revealed the entrance, and we were in. We all had to break out our bug mounts. Wild has both a blue and a green one, and I went with the green. There are four types, the blue being the most common, followed by green and then yellow. The rarest color mount, red, is so hard to get there is a special achievement for finding one. They can only be ridden inside AQ40, however. None of us had red mounts to brag about, but we were all old codgers who had at least attempted AQ40 when we were still at level 60, and we all had at least one bug mount. Why mounts? Because AQ40 is HUGE, with many long, long, passages, tunnels, and caverns.
I'll tell you what, the seven of us looked very small, standing just inside the instance. The long hallway was at least thirty feet high, bounded by thick walls of stone. Mounted mobs and heavy footed giants patrolled the area. As level 60s we spent many a night wiping just on this trash, never even getting to the first boss. With maybe just the tiniest bit of apprehension, we engaged. At smashed through them with ease.
Make a left turn at the end of the hallway and there is a set of low steps leading to another group of trash mobs. Behind those, Skeram stands in the center dias, flanked by empty raised dias's on his left and right. A long ledge above it all borders the area.
After clearing the area of mobs, we engaged head on against Skeram. The complicated strategy we used as level 60s was replaced with the Ghostbusters strat of "Get him!" We pounded Skeram down to 75% health, and he split into two additional images of himself. There were now three of him. The two images have less health than Skeram, but they all have the same abilities, so it is in effect fighting three bosses at the same time. The images have to be killed first, and we struggled to target the right ones, a difficult task. Wild took his queue from Surveydrood, assuming he would know which one to shoot at (and if he was wrong, at least we were hitting the same target). That plan took a detour when one of the Skeram's Mind Controlled Surveydrood. The deadly moonkin grew to three times his normal size and began blasting the raid. We survived that, and got Skeram (the real one) to 50% health, where he split into three again. We wiped.
Ok, maybe we'd better come up with a slightly more thorough strategy. We had gotten scattered about during the fight, with parts of the raid out of range of healing (ie, our one healer). They wanted to stay with one healer so that they could maximize DPS, so we needed to stay closer together.
It took us four tries, but in the end Wild got his first kill of The Prophet Skeram.
Skeram truly was as tough as we thought. After that fight, we fought through seemingly endless corridors and endless trash mobs, and on the way killed the bosses Battleguard Sartura, Fankriss the Unyielding, and Princess Huhuran.
The second to last of the mandatory bosses are the Twin Emperors, Vek'lor and Vek'nilesh. For that fight the raid needed two healers, so Wild switched to healing gear. The twins are fought across the room from each other. One twin is immune to all physical damage, so only ranged casters can harm him. The other twin is immune to all magical damage, so only melee (and hunters) can harm him. Wild was tapped to main heal the tank on the twin who would be meleed, while h-priest main healed the tank on the other twin. It took awhile to bring them both down, since our DPS was split up, but we were never in any serious trouble and both died.
On our way to the final boss we made a short detour and killed Ouro, one of three optional bosses in AQ40. We never did get to the other two optional encounters as we were a little limited on time.
C'thun is a very creative encounter. C'thun looks like a round, ridged jello mold gone bad. The tub of flesh has feet that circle his body and one very large eye that we were told to stay out of direct line of sight of. It was a small chamber, but even so worms would pop up all over the place that had to be destroyed in between banging on C'thun. Wild was back in moonkin gear for this fight, and h-priest had his hands full running in circles around C'thun trying to heal everyone.
The "piece de resistance" is C'thun's stomach. In Phase 2 C'thun grabs random raiders and swallows them. Yuk. Inside his stomach is a churning green mess of stomach acid that is murderous even for a level 80 because the amount of damage done by the acid stacks quickly. Small islands of flesh offer some respite, but they are defended by more of the worm things. Killing those stomach worms does more damage to C'thun than hitting his exterior body, and the strategy was to kill as many as you could before having to get out of his stomach. Wild must have missed the explanation that there was one island I could get on that would regurgitate me out of the stomach. Wild got swallowed. Wild fought worms. Wild had to drop out of moonkin to heal himself. Wild wondered what else he should be doing and how the heck was he supposed to get out of here? Wild died.
Surveydrood was swallowed a bit later. He rezzed Wild but then learned Wild's lesson, dying right next to me when Wild instantly died a second time, as I still had a massively stacked acid debuff on me.
We lost a third raider to C'thun's stomach, but after a protracted fight C'thun died. We got our Achievement for AQ40.
Of course, the gear in AQ40 was unusable for anything other than disenchanting or vendoring. However, Wild was the only enchanter in the group, and Wild was able to pick up two enchanting recipes that only drop in AQ40: Subtlety and Threat. Both are still valued enchants, and very rare.
After the battle, Wild revisited AQ40 with his video camera. When I get a chance I'll take ya'll on a tour.
Note - Yes, I'm going to cover the path 3.3 changes, but if I don't get this posted now I'm going to get too far behind.
The Temple of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ40) is an old school level 60 forty man raid. Opening the gates of this massive instance required a World Event quest series called "The Scepter of the Shifting Sands" that the entire server could participate in. There is a completely different and smaller 20 man raid that came into being along with AQ40 called the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ20) that Wild and the guild spent literally months running. We were very successful in AQ20, but AQ40 was a titanic struggle. I'd have to go back to those old posts to be completely accurate, but I don't think the guild ever got much past the first boss, Skeram, and I know for sure that no AQ40 raid that Wild was in ever defeated Skeram (Back in the day when Wild's luck demanded that I never be present at a first boss kill :-) ). AQ40 was a rarity in that Blizz decided to make the first boss extraordinarily difficult, sort of a gatekeeper/gear check guarding the great goodies that awaited those who could get past him. Only the final boss, C'Thun, was tougher.
AQ40 was the end game raid dungeon when it was released, eclipsing Blackwing Lair as the best and most difficult raid in the game (until the original Naxxramas was opened). Mostly what Wild remembers of AQ40 was wipe after wipe. The only loot that Wild ever got from there were the bug mounts that could only be ridden inside AQ40, dropped by the very tough trash leading to Skeram. To give readers an idea of just how old this place is in WoW years, let me remind you that the newest dungeons reward Tier 9 and 9.5 gear. AQ40 offered five piece Tier 2.5 gear.
There were only three guildies signed up for the raid, which by design was being run on the birthday of the raid leader, who was also our Guild Leader. I didn't think I would be able to make it, but when the 4pm start time drew near the chores were done and Wild was available. Other guildies popped in, and when Wild got his Summons to the shifting sands of southern Silithus to the far south of the continent of Kalimdor, there were seven of us. "Do you want me healing or moonkin?" Wild asked as he arrived. "Only need one healer, at least at the beginning," the GL told Wild. H-priest was the other potential healer, so Wild immediately volunteered for DPS. "Cool, I'm already in moonkin spec."
Wild was in the middle of revamping his moonkin gear set when he decided to join the AQ40 raid, but he had to put that aside and went with his existing set. We had two tanks, one healer, and the rest of us were DPS. The 7th member of the raid was a last minute invitee who logged in with other plans in mind. Surveydrood was cajoled into joining us and decided to bring his moonkin. That gave Wild a great gauge to compare himself with. Surveydrood was probably the best moonkin in the guild.
Now think about this for a bit. AQ40 is a level 60 dungeon (with the elite bosses at the equivalent of level 63), granted, but tuned to be able to tear the heads off of a forty man raid. We were all level 80, most of us draped in Ulduar and ToC epic gear, but there were only seven of us. The GL figured it would be enough. Provided we could get by Skeram.
The entrance to AQ40 is through a sand swept archway, up a longer series of wide steps, a right turn, and then more steps. Sand is piled everywhere, half submerging the above ground areas. A long ride finally revealed the entrance, and we were in. We all had to break out our bug mounts. Wild has both a blue and a green one, and I went with the green. There are four types, the blue being the most common, followed by green and then yellow. The rarest color mount, red, is so hard to get there is a special achievement for finding one. They can only be ridden inside AQ40, however. None of us had red mounts to brag about, but we were all old codgers who had at least attempted AQ40 when we were still at level 60, and we all had at least one bug mount. Why mounts? Because AQ40 is HUGE, with many long, long, passages, tunnels, and caverns.
I'll tell you what, the seven of us looked very small, standing just inside the instance. The long hallway was at least thirty feet high, bounded by thick walls of stone. Mounted mobs and heavy footed giants patrolled the area. As level 60s we spent many a night wiping just on this trash, never even getting to the first boss. With maybe just the tiniest bit of apprehension, we engaged. At smashed through them with ease.
Make a left turn at the end of the hallway and there is a set of low steps leading to another group of trash mobs. Behind those, Skeram stands in the center dias, flanked by empty raised dias's on his left and right. A long ledge above it all borders the area.
After clearing the area of mobs, we engaged head on against Skeram. The complicated strategy we used as level 60s was replaced with the Ghostbusters strat of "Get him!" We pounded Skeram down to 75% health, and he split into two additional images of himself. There were now three of him. The two images have less health than Skeram, but they all have the same abilities, so it is in effect fighting three bosses at the same time. The images have to be killed first, and we struggled to target the right ones, a difficult task. Wild took his queue from Surveydrood, assuming he would know which one to shoot at (and if he was wrong, at least we were hitting the same target). That plan took a detour when one of the Skeram's Mind Controlled Surveydrood. The deadly moonkin grew to three times his normal size and began blasting the raid. We survived that, and got Skeram (the real one) to 50% health, where he split into three again. We wiped.
Ok, maybe we'd better come up with a slightly more thorough strategy. We had gotten scattered about during the fight, with parts of the raid out of range of healing (ie, our one healer). They wanted to stay with one healer so that they could maximize DPS, so we needed to stay closer together.
It took us four tries, but in the end Wild got his first kill of The Prophet Skeram.
Skeram truly was as tough as we thought. After that fight, we fought through seemingly endless corridors and endless trash mobs, and on the way killed the bosses Battleguard Sartura, Fankriss the Unyielding, and Princess Huhuran.
The second to last of the mandatory bosses are the Twin Emperors, Vek'lor and Vek'nilesh. For that fight the raid needed two healers, so Wild switched to healing gear. The twins are fought across the room from each other. One twin is immune to all physical damage, so only ranged casters can harm him. The other twin is immune to all magical damage, so only melee (and hunters) can harm him. Wild was tapped to main heal the tank on the twin who would be meleed, while h-priest main healed the tank on the other twin. It took awhile to bring them both down, since our DPS was split up, but we were never in any serious trouble and both died.
On our way to the final boss we made a short detour and killed Ouro, one of three optional bosses in AQ40. We never did get to the other two optional encounters as we were a little limited on time.
C'thun is a very creative encounter. C'thun looks like a round, ridged jello mold gone bad. The tub of flesh has feet that circle his body and one very large eye that we were told to stay out of direct line of sight of. It was a small chamber, but even so worms would pop up all over the place that had to be destroyed in between banging on C'thun. Wild was back in moonkin gear for this fight, and h-priest had his hands full running in circles around C'thun trying to heal everyone.
The "piece de resistance" is C'thun's stomach. In Phase 2 C'thun grabs random raiders and swallows them. Yuk. Inside his stomach is a churning green mess of stomach acid that is murderous even for a level 80 because the amount of damage done by the acid stacks quickly. Small islands of flesh offer some respite, but they are defended by more of the worm things. Killing those stomach worms does more damage to C'thun than hitting his exterior body, and the strategy was to kill as many as you could before having to get out of his stomach. Wild must have missed the explanation that there was one island I could get on that would regurgitate me out of the stomach. Wild got swallowed. Wild fought worms. Wild had to drop out of moonkin to heal himself. Wild wondered what else he should be doing and how the heck was he supposed to get out of here? Wild died.
Surveydrood was swallowed a bit later. He rezzed Wild but then learned Wild's lesson, dying right next to me when Wild instantly died a second time, as I still had a massively stacked acid debuff on me.
We lost a third raider to C'thun's stomach, but after a protracted fight C'thun died. We got our Achievement for AQ40.
Of course, the gear in AQ40 was unusable for anything other than disenchanting or vendoring. However, Wild was the only enchanter in the group, and Wild was able to pick up two enchanting recipes that only drop in AQ40: Subtlety and Threat. Both are still valued enchants, and very rare.
After the battle, Wild revisited AQ40 with his video camera. When I get a chance I'll take ya'll on a tour.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Friday (4 Dec) Part 2 - Edge of Ruin
Friday (4 Dec) Part 2 - Edge of Ruin
Before I start on Saturday's run, I need to wrap up Friday night. After the guild finished for the evening on Friday, DER put together a group for Trial of the Champion, the five man version at the Argent Tournament grounds. The Argent Coliseum has a circular central chamber with three long platforms jutting out from the sides. One of those platforms is connected to the chamber via two large saloon doors. It's through these doors that the combatants that us challengers face enter the floor of the chamber. The western platform houses the instance entrance to 10/25 ToC. The northern platform is where we enter for 5 man ToC.
Soon after Wild's guild raid finished, I asked if anyone wanted to join DER and Wild, but as usual no one stuck around after the raid was over. There just isn't much for them to get excited about now, and everyone is waiting on patch 3.3, which may come Tuesday. Anyway, Wild struck out on getting anyone he knew to come. DER checked the LFG tool, and we added two players, both DPS. We needed a tank. We had one for a few minutes, but then he got a better offer and begged off before we actually got started. The two that had joined us also checked their own sources, and finally we got a warrior tank to help us out. The tank was happy to take over as group leader as he had done this fight many times. DER and the other two DPS were geared well enough for 5 man Toc, but they could definitely benefit from the gear that dropped here. For Wild and the tank, this was a for fun fight. We were over-geared for this dungeon, which would make it easier for the others. We set the dungeon to Heroic mode to make it a bit more challenging, and because the loot is better.
We all gathered in the central chamber and started the event. The first challenge was a series of jousting matches. Even lousy jousters like Wild can get through this. Wild died during this part of the fight, but I just released and flew back the short distance from the graveyard, entered, grabbed a new mount, and galloped back into action. Wild wasn't the only one that died, and this part of the fight took awhile to complete, but eventually we dismounted the attackers and defeated them.
The next encounter is called the Grand Champions. On foot and in our normal gear, we faced a random selection of three out of five npc Champions. I don't remember who they were, but the tank engaged them one after the other and the DPS pounded them down. It didn't go quite as smoothly as that, as Wild was kept busy healing mostly the DPSers. A stack of HoTs on the tank were usually all he needed. But Wild also wasn't used to the much lower health (compared to the raiders in Wild's guild raids). Wild goofed and DER died before I realized how much trouble he'd gotten into. We did beat the Grand Champions, though.
Following the Grand Champions we faced Eadric, one of two bosses we could have faced. Eadric has one big trick, and that's Radiance, which stuns any and all that are looking at him when he casts it. Wild has a very simple personal solution - Wild turns his back to Eadric as he doesn't have to be facing his fellow group mates to heal them. It looks odd, I know, as it appears Wild is not engaged in the fight, but it works and Eadric fell.
The final boss is the Black Knight. He has three phases, first as an undead knight, then he returns as a skeleton knight, and finally as a ghost knight. We wiped on our first try. Wild's healing kept pulling aggro on the army of undead that spawns in the second phase, and they tend to explode violently at the wrong moment. I'm afraid I was paying too much attention to keeping everyone else alive and died. Without a healer the DPS fell as well, and even over geared though he was, the tank could not defeat the Black Knight alone.
With some easy adjustments we brought the Black Knight down on our second try. The tank left the group the second the Black Knight fell. Wild whispered him a thank you for helping us out. He whispered back a response sort of explaining why he'd left abruptly, annoyed at some questionable remarks by one of the two DPSers that we'd brought in, and Wild also guessed that he had expected a better geared group. I granted that we had an untested group, but that is the kind of group that 5 man ToC is made for. Learn here to get experience for 10/25 man ToC. Wild gave him credit for sticking it out, though. There were many who would have left before we finished, particularly after the wipe.
As for loot, DER had one item in mind, and was prepared to run ToC as many times as he could to get it. Lucky DER, not only did his wished for gear drop, he was the only person in the group that could use it - the two-handed axe [Edge of Ruin]. Getting a new weapon is always a major thrill and are often major upgrades, as this one was for DER.
As for other loot, Wild got a shocking surprise when I saw [Barkhide Treads] show up in Eadric's loot. This is a leather caster item with +hit and a very fine upgrade for Wild's moonkin set. Matter of fact, when I researched these after the fact, it turns out this is the only leather caster gear with +hit on it at ilevel 219 or higher that is not a Tier piece or a pvp piece. It was a wonderful, unexpected find for Wild.
Since our planned multi-run assault on 5 man ToC was a much faster success than expected, we decided to try the daily dungeon run. I admit that Wild thought he would have it easy with a non-Heroic daily, but when I saw that it was OC, the dungeon that requires fighting on flying mounts, and which he hates . . . well, when DER said, no, we aren't doing the normal daily, we're doing the Heroic daily, Wild was a much happy cow.
Wild was even happier when the warrior tank for our ToC run agreed to come back and tank for us again.
I have to be honest, though. I can't recall if we ended up in Azjul'Nerub or the Old Kingdom (they are located next to each other). Gah, what was I drinking that night? All I remember is that Wild was the only one to die during a trash mob fight because I allowed a second patrol to blunder into me while the tank was quite busy elsewhere. That was a long, lonely run from the graveyard back to the rest of the group, since I was the only one in the group who could rez. I had fun, though. I think. Maybe DER knows. I know we cleared the place, as the triumph badges Wild got from finishing it would come in very handy soon enough.
So ended Wild and DER's successful and rather fuzzy (for Wild) Friday night. Next up - Old School Raid Night.
Before I start on Saturday's run, I need to wrap up Friday night. After the guild finished for the evening on Friday, DER put together a group for Trial of the Champion, the five man version at the Argent Tournament grounds. The Argent Coliseum has a circular central chamber with three long platforms jutting out from the sides. One of those platforms is connected to the chamber via two large saloon doors. It's through these doors that the combatants that us challengers face enter the floor of the chamber. The western platform houses the instance entrance to 10/25 ToC. The northern platform is where we enter for 5 man ToC.
Soon after Wild's guild raid finished, I asked if anyone wanted to join DER and Wild, but as usual no one stuck around after the raid was over. There just isn't much for them to get excited about now, and everyone is waiting on patch 3.3, which may come Tuesday. Anyway, Wild struck out on getting anyone he knew to come. DER checked the LFG tool, and we added two players, both DPS. We needed a tank. We had one for a few minutes, but then he got a better offer and begged off before we actually got started. The two that had joined us also checked their own sources, and finally we got a warrior tank to help us out. The tank was happy to take over as group leader as he had done this fight many times. DER and the other two DPS were geared well enough for 5 man Toc, but they could definitely benefit from the gear that dropped here. For Wild and the tank, this was a for fun fight. We were over-geared for this dungeon, which would make it easier for the others. We set the dungeon to Heroic mode to make it a bit more challenging, and because the loot is better.
We all gathered in the central chamber and started the event. The first challenge was a series of jousting matches. Even lousy jousters like Wild can get through this. Wild died during this part of the fight, but I just released and flew back the short distance from the graveyard, entered, grabbed a new mount, and galloped back into action. Wild wasn't the only one that died, and this part of the fight took awhile to complete, but eventually we dismounted the attackers and defeated them.
The next encounter is called the Grand Champions. On foot and in our normal gear, we faced a random selection of three out of five npc Champions. I don't remember who they were, but the tank engaged them one after the other and the DPS pounded them down. It didn't go quite as smoothly as that, as Wild was kept busy healing mostly the DPSers. A stack of HoTs on the tank were usually all he needed. But Wild also wasn't used to the much lower health (compared to the raiders in Wild's guild raids). Wild goofed and DER died before I realized how much trouble he'd gotten into. We did beat the Grand Champions, though.
Following the Grand Champions we faced Eadric, one of two bosses we could have faced. Eadric has one big trick, and that's Radiance, which stuns any and all that are looking at him when he casts it. Wild has a very simple personal solution - Wild turns his back to Eadric as he doesn't have to be facing his fellow group mates to heal them. It looks odd, I know, as it appears Wild is not engaged in the fight, but it works and Eadric fell.
The final boss is the Black Knight. He has three phases, first as an undead knight, then he returns as a skeleton knight, and finally as a ghost knight. We wiped on our first try. Wild's healing kept pulling aggro on the army of undead that spawns in the second phase, and they tend to explode violently at the wrong moment. I'm afraid I was paying too much attention to keeping everyone else alive and died. Without a healer the DPS fell as well, and even over geared though he was, the tank could not defeat the Black Knight alone.
With some easy adjustments we brought the Black Knight down on our second try. The tank left the group the second the Black Knight fell. Wild whispered him a thank you for helping us out. He whispered back a response sort of explaining why he'd left abruptly, annoyed at some questionable remarks by one of the two DPSers that we'd brought in, and Wild also guessed that he had expected a better geared group. I granted that we had an untested group, but that is the kind of group that 5 man ToC is made for. Learn here to get experience for 10/25 man ToC. Wild gave him credit for sticking it out, though. There were many who would have left before we finished, particularly after the wipe.
As for loot, DER had one item in mind, and was prepared to run ToC as many times as he could to get it. Lucky DER, not only did his wished for gear drop, he was the only person in the group that could use it - the two-handed axe [Edge of Ruin]. Getting a new weapon is always a major thrill and are often major upgrades, as this one was for DER.
As for other loot, Wild got a shocking surprise when I saw [Barkhide Treads] show up in Eadric's loot. This is a leather caster item with +hit and a very fine upgrade for Wild's moonkin set. Matter of fact, when I researched these after the fact, it turns out this is the only leather caster gear with +hit on it at ilevel 219 or higher that is not a Tier piece or a pvp piece. It was a wonderful, unexpected find for Wild.
Since our planned multi-run assault on 5 man ToC was a much faster success than expected, we decided to try the daily dungeon run. I admit that Wild thought he would have it easy with a non-Heroic daily, but when I saw that it was OC, the dungeon that requires fighting on flying mounts, and which he hates . . . well, when DER said, no, we aren't doing the normal daily, we're doing the Heroic daily, Wild was a much happy cow.
Wild was even happier when the warrior tank for our ToC run agreed to come back and tank for us again.
I have to be honest, though. I can't recall if we ended up in Azjul'Nerub or the Old Kingdom (they are located next to each other). Gah, what was I drinking that night? All I remember is that Wild was the only one to die during a trash mob fight because I allowed a second patrol to blunder into me while the tank was quite busy elsewhere. That was a long, lonely run from the graveyard back to the rest of the group, since I was the only one in the group who could rez. I had fun, though. I think. Maybe DER knows. I know we cleared the place, as the triumph badges Wild got from finishing it would come in very handy soon enough.
So ended Wild and DER's successful and rather fuzzy (for Wild) Friday night. Next up - Old School Raid Night.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Friday (4 Dec) - Bedding Freya?
Friday (4 Dec) - Bedding Freya?
There is a lot to cover for this past weekend, with Friday's raid, Saturday's Old School raid, and Sundays raid. So expect two, maybe even three posts as I try to catch up.
Before the Friday raid Wild spent all 28 of his Conquest emblems to buy a new pair of gloves called [Grips of the Secret Grove]. The ilevel 226 leather healing gloves were two levels better than the 213 ilevel cloth gloves Wild had. With that purchase there was little left that Wild could use Conquest emblems for except to pick up some idols just to add to his collection. All the "good stuff" above ilevel 226 required Triumph emblems. Wild had a few of those, too, but not enough to buy anything at the moment. Better yet, perhaps the night's run would be Wild's lucky night, since we would be going after bosses that actually drop things Wild wants.
Our Alt-10 group really likes to show up at the last minute. At 5:45pm there were 3 of us. At 5:57pm, 3 minutes before invites, there were seven of us. And at 6:02pm, we had a full raid. Wild had intended to foist healing assignments off on his druid friend Sp again, but the raid was starting in Wintergrasp's VoA and he had already run that raid earlier with a PUG. A pally healer took his place and Wild went ahead and handled the healing assignments. The raid leader, who is usually the main tank, passed main tank duties to a pally tank alt of another guildie. The pally would main tank for the whole evening, getting a wealth of experience.
Every time Wild does VoA, it seems to get a bit easier. The raid swept through the trash to Koralon and engaged the top boss in VoA with little fanfare. With a pally and shaman for healing, Wild let them tank heal while Wild handled the raid. That worked extremely well and Koralon went down on our first attempt. Koralon drops T9 gear, and he dropped two, but one was for priests only, and the other for priests, mages, and warlocks. We had no priest, so one of the drops was wasted. Tier gear cannot be disenchanted or vendored. It hurt to see it destroyed. We had both a mage and lock, and I think the mage won the other one. Emalon fell next even more easily, and dropped a nice pair of leather pvp gloves, but Wild already had better. The raid didn't bother to kill Archavon, who had even less stuff that any of us could use.
From VoA we headed to Onyxia. Wild likes the Onyxia fight, but at the same time it is monumentally frustrating to him because I always seem to get caught in Onyxia's Flame Breath and killed - more times than I want to count. Wild finally remembered to stuff his Onyxia Cloak from his vanilla WoW days into his bags, a special cloak designed for one thing - to mitigate damage from Onyxia's Flame Breath. Wild vowed he would survive that dragon this time.
We swapped healers for the start of the fight. Sp returned and the pally healer filling in just for VoA left. Wild adjusted the healing assignments to put Sp on the main tank.
We got off to a good start, racing across Ony's chamber to snare her and drag her to the back of the room. After pounding on her for a bit, she took wing, and we scrambled back across the chamber to intercept the incoming crowd of whelps. Things were going smoothly and then Ony wound up for her Flame Breath. Wild took off, following a couple of running raiders, and darned if he didn't catch the tail of the Breath. Even that light touch nearly killed Wild. Nearly. Wild healed himself up and got back into the battle. The second time Ony cast Flame Breath Wild thought he was completely safe, as I'd followed our best melee player and one who never got caught in it - until this time. What? He was baffled, too, saying in raid chat that Ony must have turned at the last minute, something she isn't supposed to do. The melee player lived through it. Wild died. Sigh.
Wild got a rez from the other druid healer, and even avoided two more Flame Breaths successfully on our way to killing Onyxia. It was only after the fight was over did Wild realize that though he had brought the Onyxia cloak with him - he'd forgotten to wear it. Sigh times two.
Onyxia drops a lot of nice stuff, and all of it went to someone who needed it. Even Wild. [Stormrage Hood], an ilevel 232 leather helm, dropped. Based on ilevel, it is better than Wild's currently equipped 226 ilevel helm. But that helm is a Tier 8.5 piece, and in comparing the two the Tier helm is actually slightly better for Wild's current needs. The other druid didn't need it, and no one else could use it, so Wild got it. Actually, Wild got two of them. Yep, two of the same gear dropped. Having two is kind of convenient, as I can enchant/gem one of them specifically for moonkin spec (which I can use immediately) and I'll still have another to use for healing should my stat requirements change and the Tier helm isn't needed.
With Ony down and VoA taken care of, we headed back to Ulduar to continue where we had left off on Wednesday, when we worked over Flame Leviathon, Razorscale, XT-002, Iron Council, Kologarn, and Auriaya (Cat Lady). Those were the "easy" encounters, though. Now we had our choice of four bosses to start with: Hodir (which Wild thinks is a particularly apt name since it's pronounced like "oh dear!"), Freya (the forest lady giant with an entire ecosystem of trash mobs), Thorim (seen a couple of times, but never killed by this group), and Mimiron (arguably the toughest of these four bosses, but which Wild has not yet had the pleasure of meeting).
We decided on Freya. Wild has had one prior night with Freya, and it was a doozy. I like the babe, but her entourage is a big pain. On that proir night it took nine tries to get her to bed . . . uh, I mean get her down . . . ok, never mind. Let's just say on our ninth date she gave up her goodies. ;-)
We were packing bigger guns now, and it showed as we carefully but quickly culled out the bunches of trash mobs, including three mini-bosses. We even accidently pulled two groups at once, bringing eight mobs after us, and survived it. We were feeling real good about Freya. Maybe Freya would remember us from last time? She did. We lasted about thirty seconds before wiping on our first attempt.
Over the course of the evening, we learned new ways to satisfy her with each attempt. When we start the fight, the main tank gets aggro on Freya and just keeps her attention. She has a huge self-healing buff on her at this stage, so it is useless to try to damage her. Think of it as her "wooing" phase, with the tank as the suitor. The rest of us circle her as the first of her entourage arrives. That can be one of several groups of trash mobs, but most often it seems to be a small army of nasty flowers. If we do things right, we all stay in our circle and the DPS AoE's down all of the flowers. Then, in no particular order, we could see exploding Lashers that have a complicated kill order to avoid blasting the raid, water spirit elementals using a druid's Tidal Wave, snaplashers (yet more flower children), and/or an Ancient Conservator, which virtually eliminates all healing and damage done by the raid. At the same time that the Conservator appears, mushrooms start to blossom. Only when under a mushroom can the healers and DPS do their thing. To make things even more interesting, one player will get tapped with a pulsing nature bomb - which will make you very unpopular if you happen to be sharing room under a mushroom with other raiders. And that's easy mode.
Six tries later we still had not brought her down, or even killed all the adds before wiping - but we were getting closer.
On our 7th attempt, we cleared all of the adds, and engaged Freya directly. We had lost three raiders and there were no battle rezzes available, but we had all three healers still alive. The tank and the three remaining DPS blasted away, and the healing stayed ahead of Freya's attacks. We knew it would take awhile with such light DPS, but we also knew we had her. But something was wrong. Freya still had Attuned to Nature, the healing buff that was supposed to drop off her once all her adds were killed. With that buff up it didn't matter how much DPS we had - she could heal through anything and everything we could throw at her. Talk about frustrating! We had this fight won, but it was bugged, and Freya's health never got lower than 98% before she would heal back again. We were forced to wipe so we could get in one last attempt before our evening ended.
On our 8th attempt we again cleared the adds, and a full complement of DPS was on hand to pound on her. For about five loooong seconds, that healing buff stayed on her, and dismay started to settle over the raid - but Freya was just being coy, and it dropped away. And so on our 8th attempt we bedded Freya once again. That woman certainly plays hard to get.
Nothing for Wild among the loot, and our evening was done. Still, it was a good night with four kills: Koralon, Emalon, Onyxia, and Freya.
The raid evening was over, but not Wild's. DER was in game looking for trouble, and Wild was happy to join him. Our target was Trial of the Champion. That's not to be confused with Trial of the Crusader, which is the 10/25 man ToC. Trial of the Champion is generally referred to as 5 man ToC, and it's very different from the 10/25. But that tale will have to be told in another post.
There is a lot to cover for this past weekend, with Friday's raid, Saturday's Old School raid, and Sundays raid. So expect two, maybe even three posts as I try to catch up.
Before the Friday raid Wild spent all 28 of his Conquest emblems to buy a new pair of gloves called [Grips of the Secret Grove]. The ilevel 226 leather healing gloves were two levels better than the 213 ilevel cloth gloves Wild had. With that purchase there was little left that Wild could use Conquest emblems for except to pick up some idols just to add to his collection. All the "good stuff" above ilevel 226 required Triumph emblems. Wild had a few of those, too, but not enough to buy anything at the moment. Better yet, perhaps the night's run would be Wild's lucky night, since we would be going after bosses that actually drop things Wild wants.
Our Alt-10 group really likes to show up at the last minute. At 5:45pm there were 3 of us. At 5:57pm, 3 minutes before invites, there were seven of us. And at 6:02pm, we had a full raid. Wild had intended to foist healing assignments off on his druid friend Sp again, but the raid was starting in Wintergrasp's VoA and he had already run that raid earlier with a PUG. A pally healer took his place and Wild went ahead and handled the healing assignments. The raid leader, who is usually the main tank, passed main tank duties to a pally tank alt of another guildie. The pally would main tank for the whole evening, getting a wealth of experience.
Every time Wild does VoA, it seems to get a bit easier. The raid swept through the trash to Koralon and engaged the top boss in VoA with little fanfare. With a pally and shaman for healing, Wild let them tank heal while Wild handled the raid. That worked extremely well and Koralon went down on our first attempt. Koralon drops T9 gear, and he dropped two, but one was for priests only, and the other for priests, mages, and warlocks. We had no priest, so one of the drops was wasted. Tier gear cannot be disenchanted or vendored. It hurt to see it destroyed. We had both a mage and lock, and I think the mage won the other one. Emalon fell next even more easily, and dropped a nice pair of leather pvp gloves, but Wild already had better. The raid didn't bother to kill Archavon, who had even less stuff that any of us could use.
From VoA we headed to Onyxia. Wild likes the Onyxia fight, but at the same time it is monumentally frustrating to him because I always seem to get caught in Onyxia's Flame Breath and killed - more times than I want to count. Wild finally remembered to stuff his Onyxia Cloak from his vanilla WoW days into his bags, a special cloak designed for one thing - to mitigate damage from Onyxia's Flame Breath. Wild vowed he would survive that dragon this time.
We swapped healers for the start of the fight. Sp returned and the pally healer filling in just for VoA left. Wild adjusted the healing assignments to put Sp on the main tank.
We got off to a good start, racing across Ony's chamber to snare her and drag her to the back of the room. After pounding on her for a bit, she took wing, and we scrambled back across the chamber to intercept the incoming crowd of whelps. Things were going smoothly and then Ony wound up for her Flame Breath. Wild took off, following a couple of running raiders, and darned if he didn't catch the tail of the Breath. Even that light touch nearly killed Wild. Nearly. Wild healed himself up and got back into the battle. The second time Ony cast Flame Breath Wild thought he was completely safe, as I'd followed our best melee player and one who never got caught in it - until this time. What? He was baffled, too, saying in raid chat that Ony must have turned at the last minute, something she isn't supposed to do. The melee player lived through it. Wild died. Sigh.
Wild got a rez from the other druid healer, and even avoided two more Flame Breaths successfully on our way to killing Onyxia. It was only after the fight was over did Wild realize that though he had brought the Onyxia cloak with him - he'd forgotten to wear it. Sigh times two.
Onyxia drops a lot of nice stuff, and all of it went to someone who needed it. Even Wild. [Stormrage Hood], an ilevel 232 leather helm, dropped. Based on ilevel, it is better than Wild's currently equipped 226 ilevel helm. But that helm is a Tier 8.5 piece, and in comparing the two the Tier helm is actually slightly better for Wild's current needs. The other druid didn't need it, and no one else could use it, so Wild got it. Actually, Wild got two of them. Yep, two of the same gear dropped. Having two is kind of convenient, as I can enchant/gem one of them specifically for moonkin spec (which I can use immediately) and I'll still have another to use for healing should my stat requirements change and the Tier helm isn't needed.
With Ony down and VoA taken care of, we headed back to Ulduar to continue where we had left off on Wednesday, when we worked over Flame Leviathon, Razorscale, XT-002, Iron Council, Kologarn, and Auriaya (Cat Lady). Those were the "easy" encounters, though. Now we had our choice of four bosses to start with: Hodir (which Wild thinks is a particularly apt name since it's pronounced like "oh dear!"), Freya (the forest lady giant with an entire ecosystem of trash mobs), Thorim (seen a couple of times, but never killed by this group), and Mimiron (arguably the toughest of these four bosses, but which Wild has not yet had the pleasure of meeting).
We decided on Freya. Wild has had one prior night with Freya, and it was a doozy. I like the babe, but her entourage is a big pain. On that proir night it took nine tries to get her to bed . . . uh, I mean get her down . . . ok, never mind. Let's just say on our ninth date she gave up her goodies. ;-)
We were packing bigger guns now, and it showed as we carefully but quickly culled out the bunches of trash mobs, including three mini-bosses. We even accidently pulled two groups at once, bringing eight mobs after us, and survived it. We were feeling real good about Freya. Maybe Freya would remember us from last time? She did. We lasted about thirty seconds before wiping on our first attempt.
Over the course of the evening, we learned new ways to satisfy her with each attempt. When we start the fight, the main tank gets aggro on Freya and just keeps her attention. She has a huge self-healing buff on her at this stage, so it is useless to try to damage her. Think of it as her "wooing" phase, with the tank as the suitor. The rest of us circle her as the first of her entourage arrives. That can be one of several groups of trash mobs, but most often it seems to be a small army of nasty flowers. If we do things right, we all stay in our circle and the DPS AoE's down all of the flowers. Then, in no particular order, we could see exploding Lashers that have a complicated kill order to avoid blasting the raid, water spirit elementals using a druid's Tidal Wave, snaplashers (yet more flower children), and/or an Ancient Conservator, which virtually eliminates all healing and damage done by the raid. At the same time that the Conservator appears, mushrooms start to blossom. Only when under a mushroom can the healers and DPS do their thing. To make things even more interesting, one player will get tapped with a pulsing nature bomb - which will make you very unpopular if you happen to be sharing room under a mushroom with other raiders. And that's easy mode.
Six tries later we still had not brought her down, or even killed all the adds before wiping - but we were getting closer.
On our 7th attempt, we cleared all of the adds, and engaged Freya directly. We had lost three raiders and there were no battle rezzes available, but we had all three healers still alive. The tank and the three remaining DPS blasted away, and the healing stayed ahead of Freya's attacks. We knew it would take awhile with such light DPS, but we also knew we had her. But something was wrong. Freya still had Attuned to Nature, the healing buff that was supposed to drop off her once all her adds were killed. With that buff up it didn't matter how much DPS we had - she could heal through anything and everything we could throw at her. Talk about frustrating! We had this fight won, but it was bugged, and Freya's health never got lower than 98% before she would heal back again. We were forced to wipe so we could get in one last attempt before our evening ended.
On our 8th attempt we again cleared the adds, and a full complement of DPS was on hand to pound on her. For about five loooong seconds, that healing buff stayed on her, and dismay started to settle over the raid - but Freya was just being coy, and it dropped away. And so on our 8th attempt we bedded Freya once again. That woman certainly plays hard to get.
Nothing for Wild among the loot, and our evening was done. Still, it was a good night with four kills: Koralon, Emalon, Onyxia, and Freya.
The raid evening was over, but not Wild's. DER was in game looking for trouble, and Wild was happy to join him. Our target was Trial of the Champion. That's not to be confused with Trial of the Crusader, which is the 10/25 man ToC. Trial of the Champion is generally referred to as 5 man ToC, and it's very different from the 10/25. But that tale will have to be told in another post.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Wednesday Part 2 (2 Dec) - A Deeper Look at PvP
Wednesday Part 2 (2 Dec) - A Deeper Look at PvP
I thought it might be interesting to talk about the numbers behind a pvp battleground match. And perhaps take some of the sting out of the last pvp post talking about hitting that wall. Because, goodies or not, pvp is still a lot of fun.
The following screenshot is of a winning Warsong Gulch match in the level 19 bracket. The pvp team of Ando, Lao, and EZ did well in this match (what, you think I'd show you one we sucked at? :P )
The flag captures and returns are specific to WSG, and shows who grabbed enemy flags and capped them, and who took away home flags from the enemy and returned them to the base. Flag caps are what win matches, so that is an important stat.
Killing Blows mean just that - a KB means you delivered the blow that ended that opponent's life. Pvpers love to get KBs, although in truth all of the prior damage that led up to the KB is just as important.
That's where Damage Done comes into play. The more damage done, the more likely enemy pvpers are dying, even if one never gets the KB. Note that Ando led all horde pvpers in KBs with 13, but also finished very high (2nd) in damage done. Ando laid waste to those allies!
Healing Done is also a critical stat, often overlooked. Pvpers generally want to kill people, not heal them. Lao was close to dead last in dealing damage and KBs, but that was because she was Ando and EZ's priestly godmother and helped keep them both alive and earning those KBs. Lao led in healing, and as a healer she got credit for it in terms of honor.
Note again that Ando was also second in total healing. That's the flexibility of a druid, and a testament to how good erik is at pvp (and I expect to be paid for that endorsement ;-) ).
Honor gained is the final, and key stat, second only to winning. Honor points can be spent on all kinds of goodies, and this is how it's earned. Note that Lao received 89 honor for her healing, more than either Ando or EZ received for all that mayhem. It's good to be a healer in BGs, but still, most players won't do it.
One last stat - Ando, EZ, and Lao are level 19 and twinks with maxed out gear in a battleground full of under level 19s. We can do that only because we can still earn xp without dinging to level 20, but that will soon end once we get too close to levelling. See the stat Deaths? Note who the only three people are THAT DID NOT DIE. Not even once - Ando, EZ, and Lao. Twinking is fun and addictive. And sometimes one forgets that xp adds up.
When the WSG match ended in victory, Ando discovered that the xp for that victory DINGED! him to level 20. EZ and Lao thought that was hilarious, and we don't plan to ever let him forget it. We do have to figure out what we are going to do now, though. Should we move up to the level 29 bracket? Should erik roll a new toon and level him to 19? Should we forget about brackets and just keep levelling in pvp matches until we make it to level 80? Lao's comment to that last idea had us in stitches: "You know that by the time we could pvp level to 80, the level cap will probably be like 100." But wouldn't that make it all the more fun?
I thought it might be interesting to talk about the numbers behind a pvp battleground match. And perhaps take some of the sting out of the last pvp post talking about hitting that wall. Because, goodies or not, pvp is still a lot of fun.
The following screenshot is of a winning Warsong Gulch match in the level 19 bracket. The pvp team of Ando, Lao, and EZ did well in this match (what, you think I'd show you one we sucked at? :P )
The flag captures and returns are specific to WSG, and shows who grabbed enemy flags and capped them, and who took away home flags from the enemy and returned them to the base. Flag caps are what win matches, so that is an important stat.
Killing Blows mean just that - a KB means you delivered the blow that ended that opponent's life. Pvpers love to get KBs, although in truth all of the prior damage that led up to the KB is just as important.
That's where Damage Done comes into play. The more damage done, the more likely enemy pvpers are dying, even if one never gets the KB. Note that Ando led all horde pvpers in KBs with 13, but also finished very high (2nd) in damage done. Ando laid waste to those allies!
Healing Done is also a critical stat, often overlooked. Pvpers generally want to kill people, not heal them. Lao was close to dead last in dealing damage and KBs, but that was because she was Ando and EZ's priestly godmother and helped keep them both alive and earning those KBs. Lao led in healing, and as a healer she got credit for it in terms of honor.
Note again that Ando was also second in total healing. That's the flexibility of a druid, and a testament to how good erik is at pvp (and I expect to be paid for that endorsement ;-) ).
Honor gained is the final, and key stat, second only to winning. Honor points can be spent on all kinds of goodies, and this is how it's earned. Note that Lao received 89 honor for her healing, more than either Ando or EZ received for all that mayhem. It's good to be a healer in BGs, but still, most players won't do it.
One last stat - Ando, EZ, and Lao are level 19 and twinks with maxed out gear in a battleground full of under level 19s. We can do that only because we can still earn xp without dinging to level 20, but that will soon end once we get too close to levelling. See the stat Deaths? Note who the only three people are THAT DID NOT DIE. Not even once - Ando, EZ, and Lao. Twinking is fun and addictive. And sometimes one forgets that xp adds up.
When the WSG match ended in victory, Ando discovered that the xp for that victory DINGED! him to level 20. EZ and Lao thought that was hilarious, and we don't plan to ever let him forget it. We do have to figure out what we are going to do now, though. Should we move up to the level 29 bracket? Should erik roll a new toon and level him to 19? Should we forget about brackets and just keep levelling in pvp matches until we make it to level 80? Lao's comment to that last idea had us in stitches: "You know that by the time we could pvp level to 80, the level cap will probably be like 100." But wouldn't that make it all the more fun?
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday (2 Dec) - Doing the Chicken Dance
Wednesday (2 Dec) - Doing the Chicken Dance
Note - I'm going to start posting the contents on the Sporting News site again, instead of just providing the link to the blog. I'll keep the blog going, too, for those who prefer that, but frankly I'm not getting as many readers since I stopped posting on the TSN forums. Hopefully that is the cause, and not that you've gotten tired of me. ;-)
The guild alt-10 raid seems to be catching on. Not only did we have a full complement sign up for the raid, we had more guildies in game asking if they could go. Wild counted fourteen folks who were interested in running with the raid. Perhaps this was a one time thing, and perhaps it can't last with the holidays upon us, but it's still a good thing to see. We sorted out who would go, with some of our regulars bowing out so that those who needed it more could go. Usually we start with Onyxia on Wednesdays, but the raid leader wanted to focus just on Ulduar this time so that raiders who could only run on Friday would get a chance at Onyxia this week. Ulduar is getting pretty old for some in our raid, so bowing out was not that hard of a decision. There were also more than enough healers, and how often can I say that!? We shuffled new folks and new alts around until we were happy with the setup. We had three good tanks, although only our raid leader was an experienced tank, and for most fights he put the two lesser experienced tanks on the bosses so they could learn. Wild and another druid, Sp, plus a shaman alt of someone (there are so many guildies running alts I lose track of who is who), were the healers. Wild decided it was time to let someone else set up the healing assignments, so Wild "volunteered" Sp to take the lead. Wild's regular healing partners, h-priest and P-Jo, never wanted to handle that chore, which is why Wild got the job by default in the first place. But Sp and the raid leader were both ok with the idea, and that gave Wild a bit of a break from that role.
Healing wasn't necessary for the vehicle based Flame Leviathon fight, and we quickly destroyed the big tank. This fight is a joke now, and we just rush through it so we can get to the other bosses.
Razorscale came next, and Sp set up a three healer assignment. But three healers aren't really needed for this fight, so Sp asked the shaman healer to switch to his elemental spec. But the shaman said he was badly geared for elemental, and would not put out much DPS. Wild offered that he could go moonkin spec. And everyone wanted the raid buffs a moonkin delivers: +3% haste (faster casting and melee), +5% crit, and spell based +13% damage dealing for the raid when "Earth and Moon" is active. Not to mention -3% damage to the tank with Insect Swarm.
Wild got to "go chicken" for the Razorscale fight. It was a blast! Wild assisted the two tanks on killing the adds that spawn at the beginning of the fight, but it got even more fun when Razorscale landed and Wild could really cut loose. Wild has three DoTs that are applied right at the beginning of a fight, and then reapplied as needed: Faerie Fire (improved +hit for the raid), Moonfire, and Insect Swarm. Wild then begins spamming Wrath until a spell called Eclipse procs. Eclipse dramatically increases +crit, and it switches between Wrath and Starfire. If Wild gets Eclipse while casting Wrath, I immediately switch to Starfire to make use of the increased crit. If Wild is casting Starfire when Eclipse procs, I switch to Wrath. Keeping track of that can be hard with everything else going on during a fight, but Wild has an addon called "Squawk and Awe" that helps me keep track of the Eclipse procs and which spell I should be using.
Wild was no where near the top of the DPS charts, but did acceptable damage at around 2500 dps. Razorscale died.
XT-002 was up next, and Wild stayed moonkin for that as well. Wild was a bit tentative on the Razorscale fight, getting used to the spell rotations and overly concerned with keeping up the DoTs. On XT, it was "chickens gone wild" and Wild did his darndest to burn up all his mana, just to see how hard and fast Wild could cast. Wild pulled a little over 2700 DPS, good enough for fifth in DPS, and still never ran out of mana. That's a bit of a tease, by the way. Let's see, there were two healers, and two tanks, who don't really count when measuring DPS. That left six full time DPSers. Hey, at least I beat one DPS raider! Also, to be fair to Wild, he was DPSing in what is mostly healing gear augmented just enough so that he would be at the hit cap and not miss with his spells (he had no misses). Wild also has no set bonuses for moonkin spec, nor does he have the better idol for moonkin, which cost 25 triumph badges (Wild only last week got the better idol for healing). Overall Wild was pleased with his performance, although I did make one mistake that would have measurably improved his numbers - I never used Starfall, which is a cast and forget AoE. It's not something that should be used in every situation, but I could and should have used it on both XT and Razor. Wild just needs more "chicken time" for practicing!
After XT we headed for the Iron Council, and Wild shifted back to healing for the rest of the evening, as we needed three.
Iron Council - we tried four times, failing on every attempt. There were issues of tank positioning where they took themselves out of healing range. Healers can't maneuver too much on this fight because there are three bosses spread out over a large chamber. There were issues of raiders standing in deadly zones instead of immediately vacating them. Wild started as a raid healer, but Sp added Wild to tank healing when it looked liked we weren't getting enough healing to him.
We decided to break from IC and went after Kologarn. It's cool when someone else does the healing assignments. When Wild does the assignments, I usually take the harder jobs, unless there is a healing class for which it would be natural to give that job to. With Sp doing the assignments, he took the tough ones, and Wild got things like raid healing and Grip healing for Kologarn. Of course, Wild still HoTed up the main tank, kept the off tank healed, and in general did what I always do. Kologarn didn't last very long.
Rejuvenated by victory, we went back to Iron Council and killed them.
With time running out, we had one shot at the Cat Lady. We had not had a single break, however, and there were a couple of raiders holding their knees together, so the raid leader said for us to assemble at the Cat Lady area and then he would call a short break.
We assembled, and once we were all there the raid leader saw that the two trash mobs we needed to kill were presently in a good position to take on. He ordered the attack in raid chat. Wild was quick to add that I would handle sparks, an easy but critical task, and the raid leader pulled the mobs. Funny thing, though. Only half the raid responded. The other half had started their break. We wiped, of course.
A slightly miffed raid leader eventually admitted that he should have done a ready check before engaging. "But you should all know not to start a break until I give the word!" he couldn't help grumbling.
We sorted that out, and it turned out we only needed one shot at Cat Lady. She died.
Since Wild had split time between DPS and healing, overall numbers didn't mean much. Healing-wise, on individual fights Wild and Sp went back and forth between #1 and #2 in healing. Wild's two best hps numbers were on two of the IC fights - 2787 and 2899 hps. Not bad for 10 man.
Wild has no need for any of the gear dropped by these early bosses in Ulduar. I can still use the Conquest emblems that drop, but as for gear, it's the latter half of Ulduar I keep hoping we figure out how to get to and beat. Here's hoping we put a dent in those bosses come Friday.
There was also this thing called pvp going on, and I'll cover that in a separate post.
Note - I'm going to start posting the contents on the Sporting News site again, instead of just providing the link to the blog. I'll keep the blog going, too, for those who prefer that, but frankly I'm not getting as many readers since I stopped posting on the TSN forums. Hopefully that is the cause, and not that you've gotten tired of me. ;-)
The guild alt-10 raid seems to be catching on. Not only did we have a full complement sign up for the raid, we had more guildies in game asking if they could go. Wild counted fourteen folks who were interested in running with the raid. Perhaps this was a one time thing, and perhaps it can't last with the holidays upon us, but it's still a good thing to see. We sorted out who would go, with some of our regulars bowing out so that those who needed it more could go. Usually we start with Onyxia on Wednesdays, but the raid leader wanted to focus just on Ulduar this time so that raiders who could only run on Friday would get a chance at Onyxia this week. Ulduar is getting pretty old for some in our raid, so bowing out was not that hard of a decision. There were also more than enough healers, and how often can I say that!? We shuffled new folks and new alts around until we were happy with the setup. We had three good tanks, although only our raid leader was an experienced tank, and for most fights he put the two lesser experienced tanks on the bosses so they could learn. Wild and another druid, Sp, plus a shaman alt of someone (there are so many guildies running alts I lose track of who is who), were the healers. Wild decided it was time to let someone else set up the healing assignments, so Wild "volunteered" Sp to take the lead. Wild's regular healing partners, h-priest and P-Jo, never wanted to handle that chore, which is why Wild got the job by default in the first place. But Sp and the raid leader were both ok with the idea, and that gave Wild a bit of a break from that role.
Healing wasn't necessary for the vehicle based Flame Leviathon fight, and we quickly destroyed the big tank. This fight is a joke now, and we just rush through it so we can get to the other bosses.
Razorscale came next, and Sp set up a three healer assignment. But three healers aren't really needed for this fight, so Sp asked the shaman healer to switch to his elemental spec. But the shaman said he was badly geared for elemental, and would not put out much DPS. Wild offered that he could go moonkin spec. And everyone wanted the raid buffs a moonkin delivers: +3% haste (faster casting and melee), +5% crit, and spell based +13% damage dealing for the raid when "Earth and Moon" is active. Not to mention -3% damage to the tank with Insect Swarm.
Wild got to "go chicken" for the Razorscale fight. It was a blast! Wild assisted the two tanks on killing the adds that spawn at the beginning of the fight, but it got even more fun when Razorscale landed and Wild could really cut loose. Wild has three DoTs that are applied right at the beginning of a fight, and then reapplied as needed: Faerie Fire (improved +hit for the raid), Moonfire, and Insect Swarm. Wild then begins spamming Wrath until a spell called Eclipse procs. Eclipse dramatically increases +crit, and it switches between Wrath and Starfire. If Wild gets Eclipse while casting Wrath, I immediately switch to Starfire to make use of the increased crit. If Wild is casting Starfire when Eclipse procs, I switch to Wrath. Keeping track of that can be hard with everything else going on during a fight, but Wild has an addon called "Squawk and Awe" that helps me keep track of the Eclipse procs and which spell I should be using.
Wild was no where near the top of the DPS charts, but did acceptable damage at around 2500 dps. Razorscale died.
XT-002 was up next, and Wild stayed moonkin for that as well. Wild was a bit tentative on the Razorscale fight, getting used to the spell rotations and overly concerned with keeping up the DoTs. On XT, it was "chickens gone wild" and Wild did his darndest to burn up all his mana, just to see how hard and fast Wild could cast. Wild pulled a little over 2700 DPS, good enough for fifth in DPS, and still never ran out of mana. That's a bit of a tease, by the way. Let's see, there were two healers, and two tanks, who don't really count when measuring DPS. That left six full time DPSers. Hey, at least I beat one DPS raider! Also, to be fair to Wild, he was DPSing in what is mostly healing gear augmented just enough so that he would be at the hit cap and not miss with his spells (he had no misses). Wild also has no set bonuses for moonkin spec, nor does he have the better idol for moonkin, which cost 25 triumph badges (Wild only last week got the better idol for healing). Overall Wild was pleased with his performance, although I did make one mistake that would have measurably improved his numbers - I never used Starfall, which is a cast and forget AoE. It's not something that should be used in every situation, but I could and should have used it on both XT and Razor. Wild just needs more "chicken time" for practicing!
After XT we headed for the Iron Council, and Wild shifted back to healing for the rest of the evening, as we needed three.
Iron Council - we tried four times, failing on every attempt. There were issues of tank positioning where they took themselves out of healing range. Healers can't maneuver too much on this fight because there are three bosses spread out over a large chamber. There were issues of raiders standing in deadly zones instead of immediately vacating them. Wild started as a raid healer, but Sp added Wild to tank healing when it looked liked we weren't getting enough healing to him.
We decided to break from IC and went after Kologarn. It's cool when someone else does the healing assignments. When Wild does the assignments, I usually take the harder jobs, unless there is a healing class for which it would be natural to give that job to. With Sp doing the assignments, he took the tough ones, and Wild got things like raid healing and Grip healing for Kologarn. Of course, Wild still HoTed up the main tank, kept the off tank healed, and in general did what I always do. Kologarn didn't last very long.
Rejuvenated by victory, we went back to Iron Council and killed them.
With time running out, we had one shot at the Cat Lady. We had not had a single break, however, and there were a couple of raiders holding their knees together, so the raid leader said for us to assemble at the Cat Lady area and then he would call a short break.
We assembled, and once we were all there the raid leader saw that the two trash mobs we needed to kill were presently in a good position to take on. He ordered the attack in raid chat. Wild was quick to add that I would handle sparks, an easy but critical task, and the raid leader pulled the mobs. Funny thing, though. Only half the raid responded. The other half had started their break. We wiped, of course.
A slightly miffed raid leader eventually admitted that he should have done a ready check before engaging. "But you should all know not to start a break until I give the word!" he couldn't help grumbling.
We sorted that out, and it turned out we only needed one shot at Cat Lady. She died.
Since Wild had split time between DPS and healing, overall numbers didn't mean much. Healing-wise, on individual fights Wild and Sp went back and forth between #1 and #2 in healing. Wild's two best hps numbers were on two of the IC fights - 2787 and 2899 hps. Not bad for 10 man.
Wild has no need for any of the gear dropped by these early bosses in Ulduar. I can still use the Conquest emblems that drop, but as for gear, it's the latter half of Ulduar I keep hoping we figure out how to get to and beat. Here's hoping we put a dent in those bosses come Friday.
There was also this thing called pvp going on, and I'll cover that in a separate post.
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Tuesday (1 Dec) - Hitting the PvP Wall
Tuesday (1 Dec) - Hitting the PvP Wall
Don't get me wrong, Philly, EZ, JB, and even (shock!) Wild get a lot of fun out of pvp. Getting Philly teamed up with Red and then Myst for Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin really turned Wild's family on to pvp. Then we built a new level 19 bracket team of EZ, Ando and Lao and again won more battles than we lost week after week. Ultimately, DER and JB teamed up for level 80 pvp battlegrounds, starting with JB's fascination with Wintergrasp and growing to encompass level 80 brackets for Arathi Basin (AB), Alterac Valley (AV), Warsong Gulch (WSG), and the new ones, Isle of Conquest (IoC) and Strand of the Ancients (SoA).
Not only has pvp been a lot of fun, it offered great rewards as well. JB's current gear includes a pvp earned helm, bracers, belt, boots, ring, and trinket making up six of JB's 17 gear slots. Two heirloom items also came in part from pvp (and in part from leftover badges of heroism that Wild couldn't use) that helped EZ in pvp and is currently helping Philly level.
The problem is that at level 80 the pvp rewards suddenly appear nearly dry. There are still many items JB could buy, but very little (maybe nothing) that would be an upgrade to what JB now has. Battleground pvp gear rewards max out at ilevel 226, except for the pants (ilevel 232). JB "might" still get the pants, but she already has pve ilevel 226 pants that stat for stat are better than the pvp ones.
JB now has close to 70,000 honor and will soon reach the max of 75k if she doesn't spend some it. She has over 200 WG shards to spend, and will reach 40 WG marks of honor with one more battle as well. But the WG quartermaster can't offer her much to spend it on; nor can any of the various quartermasters located in the House of Honor in Orgrimmar.
So, JB was going to focus on heirloom gear - and ran into another roadblock. There are only five heirloom types (I just assumed that every gear slot had an corresponding heirloom - I was wrong). The Wild family already has two of them - shoulders and trinket. The chest piece can only be purchased using heroism badges, which Wild spent the last of for the trinket and which can't be earned anymore. The fourth heirloom item is a weapon, and as a ast resort JB might buy one, but it offers nothing special from a levelling perspective and it is easy enough to get better weapons while levelling. Getting a different heirloom shoulder for mail/plate might be worth doing. What I really want is the chest, and there is one other way to get it - earn the Crusader title in the Argent Tournament. The grind to get that, which requires winning titles for ALL of the major cities (Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Undercity) would take months to accomplish. That's not a grind I'm interested in.
JB went so far as to look up the rewards for the other battlegrounds: AB, AV, and WSG. JB was shocked to learn that they only offer gear below ilevel 200! JB can't use any of that. So she figured that the new battlegrounds, SoA and IoC, would offer new and better rewards. No. They offer the very same rewards that all the other battlegrounds offer. And the only thing of interest there "might" be the special riding mounts. But you know what? They are level 60 ground mounts. No flying mounts.
Reading through the various posts in wowhead, the frustration among the dedicated pvpers was pretty evident. What good were the new battlegrounds if all that effort still got them the same old stuff available in any other battleground? Very disturbing decision by Blizzard.
So, JB is still going to be hitting the battlegrounds, just because it's fun. But Philly has started looking hard at doing pvp battlegrounds as another way to level and earn pvp gear that would be the equal or better of what she can get through questing, at least until level 80. In addition, Philly knows that there are a lot of jewelcrafting recipes purchasable with honor and pvp marks, so if she wants those she'd better start working on that now while it still has value.
Finally, there has been some discussion about levelling some characters entirely through pvp beginning at level 20. That sounds pretty cool to do, and if our pvp threesome decides to do that the Wild family already has a volunteer - level 13 paladin Jocelin. In that case, JB may purchase the mail/plate heirloom shoulders for her.
Don't get me wrong, Philly, EZ, JB, and even (shock!) Wild get a lot of fun out of pvp. Getting Philly teamed up with Red and then Myst for Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin really turned Wild's family on to pvp. Then we built a new level 19 bracket team of EZ, Ando and Lao and again won more battles than we lost week after week. Ultimately, DER and JB teamed up for level 80 pvp battlegrounds, starting with JB's fascination with Wintergrasp and growing to encompass level 80 brackets for Arathi Basin (AB), Alterac Valley (AV), Warsong Gulch (WSG), and the new ones, Isle of Conquest (IoC) and Strand of the Ancients (SoA).
Not only has pvp been a lot of fun, it offered great rewards as well. JB's current gear includes a pvp earned helm, bracers, belt, boots, ring, and trinket making up six of JB's 17 gear slots. Two heirloom items also came in part from pvp (and in part from leftover badges of heroism that Wild couldn't use) that helped EZ in pvp and is currently helping Philly level.
The problem is that at level 80 the pvp rewards suddenly appear nearly dry. There are still many items JB could buy, but very little (maybe nothing) that would be an upgrade to what JB now has. Battleground pvp gear rewards max out at ilevel 226, except for the pants (ilevel 232). JB "might" still get the pants, but she already has pve ilevel 226 pants that stat for stat are better than the pvp ones.
JB now has close to 70,000 honor and will soon reach the max of 75k if she doesn't spend some it. She has over 200 WG shards to spend, and will reach 40 WG marks of honor with one more battle as well. But the WG quartermaster can't offer her much to spend it on; nor can any of the various quartermasters located in the House of Honor in Orgrimmar.
So, JB was going to focus on heirloom gear - and ran into another roadblock. There are only five heirloom types (I just assumed that every gear slot had an corresponding heirloom - I was wrong). The Wild family already has two of them - shoulders and trinket. The chest piece can only be purchased using heroism badges, which Wild spent the last of for the trinket and which can't be earned anymore. The fourth heirloom item is a weapon, and as a ast resort JB might buy one, but it offers nothing special from a levelling perspective and it is easy enough to get better weapons while levelling. Getting a different heirloom shoulder for mail/plate might be worth doing. What I really want is the chest, and there is one other way to get it - earn the Crusader title in the Argent Tournament. The grind to get that, which requires winning titles for ALL of the major cities (Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, Undercity) would take months to accomplish. That's not a grind I'm interested in.
JB went so far as to look up the rewards for the other battlegrounds: AB, AV, and WSG. JB was shocked to learn that they only offer gear below ilevel 200! JB can't use any of that. So she figured that the new battlegrounds, SoA and IoC, would offer new and better rewards. No. They offer the very same rewards that all the other battlegrounds offer. And the only thing of interest there "might" be the special riding mounts. But you know what? They are level 60 ground mounts. No flying mounts.
Reading through the various posts in wowhead, the frustration among the dedicated pvpers was pretty evident. What good were the new battlegrounds if all that effort still got them the same old stuff available in any other battleground? Very disturbing decision by Blizzard.
So, JB is still going to be hitting the battlegrounds, just because it's fun. But Philly has started looking hard at doing pvp battlegrounds as another way to level and earn pvp gear that would be the equal or better of what she can get through questing, at least until level 80. In addition, Philly knows that there are a lot of jewelcrafting recipes purchasable with honor and pvp marks, so if she wants those she'd better start working on that now while it still has value.
Finally, there has been some discussion about levelling some characters entirely through pvp beginning at level 20. That sounds pretty cool to do, and if our pvp threesome decides to do that the Wild family already has a volunteer - level 13 paladin Jocelin. In that case, JB may purchase the mail/plate heirloom shoulders for her.
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