These new Achievements really are my cup of tea - what better way to spend the last weeks before Wrath than revisiting all of the old world and do all those dungeons and raids once again so you'll get credit for them.
Tessye, my rogue, my master fisherman and master cook, is of course doing all the achievements related to those professions.
Last night I was flying around in Outland fishing and killing stuff to complete the Outland Angler and the Outland Gourmet achievements, when I saw that there was a nice little mission called the Lurker Above.
Never been raiding with Tessye but so what, these days you don't need an attunement to enter SSC and she is a rogue with Master of Deception and Camouflage, she can sneak past most mobs.
(And by "sneak past", I mean keeping to the side of the gangways, bypassing mobs, cause looking away for a split second and running right into a bog giant will get you spotted and killed, no matter how good a sneaker you are - this I discovered the hard way.)
So, I got a sweet guildie who were exploring the world and thus not unwilling to be in a raid group with me to make just such a group. Enter SSC and stealth up. I thought for sure some on the mobs would be able to see through stealth, but none did - they were all unable to see me! Well, except that bog giant I had that unfortunate close encounter with.
I stealthed along to the gangway support strut that makes a handy ramp down into the water and went down. Sadly, the fishies in the water could see me so I went down for real as well :-(
Since I am such an avid fisherman and do the daily fishing quest, I have a lot of Elixir of Water Walking in my bags, so for next try I popped one of these before I dared venture out over the water. For some reason I did submerge once I left the ramp, and the fishies were onto me pretty fast, so try #2 was a fail as well :-(
Well, not like I was gonna give up that easily! I had engaged all the guild in my tries through gchat and I couldn't just back down now, could I? They even almost started a bet poll on my chances of one-womanning the Lurker if I ever got to his little isle.
So, next try, on the platform closest to the isle, standing just above the water, I drank an Elixir, went into Stealth again and then I popped my Sprint.
But it was still the same, as soon as I went into the water I sank down! Luckily, this time I jumped up asap, managed to get up on the water surface and started sprinting over the water to the isle.
And I got there! Not a single fish attacked me!
Could fish the Lurker up in peace and quiet in the little isle...
Took me a fair few tries before the old cunning fish finally took the bait and came up for me, but I am now a proud accomplisher of The Lurker Above!
And no, I didn't one-woman the old smelly bucket of dead carp, he took one hit at me for 17 k and I went down like a very dead rogue :/
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Fishing the Lurker
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Professions, professions, professions...
So, tomorrow it will be patch day, and loads of new stuff will be available, among it all a new profession, Inscriptions, and the rest of the professions have been polished up with new fun and/or cool features and recipes.
I know for sure I will get this new profession on one of my girls, but which one? Being the levelling freak that I am, all of my girl are capped in their primary professions, so it is not just a question of ditching any old profession and start levelling the new one.
Tessye, my first, my precious, has been a skinner and leatherworker since day one. Those trainers were the first ones I encountered in Goldshire so I picked that up, not knowing that there was anything else, and it’s been a good choice for a rogue so far and it seems to be a good choice in WotLK too.
Since skinners see a lot of dead animals without their clothes on they can become Masters of Anatomy, by which they will know that exact spot where to out the dagger to wreak maximum havoc on a poor mob of any kind. Good knowledge for a rogue :-)
There will alse be nice gear available to leatherworkers and some bracers and leg patches that are LW only, like different Fur Linings and leg armors.
Joaquime, my druid, is an herbalist and alchemist, transmute master. The herbalists get some extra love with the Lifeblood HoT. Not that she really needs another HoT, being a druid, BUT this one is useable while shapeshifted! This will be very handy when soloing in cat form or tanking in bear. Also, I really don’t want to lose herbalism on her, since picking flowers in epic flight form must be the fastest, simplest way ever of farming herbs.
Alchemists get some sweet loving too. They can already make and use Mad Alchemist’s Potion, which is a really cheap alternative to Super Mana/Healing Potions, and now they will also be able to learn Mixology. Increased effect and twice the duration of every flask and elixir, yes thank you!
Paynne, my little warlock, is a tailor and a miner. Being a clothie, her tailoring will provide her with something new to wear every now and then, which is important for the fashionable warlock. For some reason, tailors will also be able to get more cloth drops than non-tailors.
She already has a cool epic flyer but will probably make herself a flying carpet as well,
Mining is actually a nice boost to a warlock with the Toughness spell, and she is capped and has an epic flyer, which makes farming ores rather fast and not much of a hassle. Daissy, her fellow gnome warrior, is a miner too but she still has a slow-ass copter and mining with that takes forever! (Yeye, I will get her an epic flyer too, but I am not that rich yet!)
I don’t want to drop Daissy’s mining since as a warrior she also benefits from Toughness. She is also an engineer, which needs lots and lots of ores and bars to make her cool fun trinkets and weapons. Now engineers will get a whole lotta new fun recipes, like new goggles, a portable mailbox and the very handy Army Knife. They will also learn how to make a chopper, but like Paynne she already has a cool mount, her pretty pink tiger.
Jools, my priest, is a jewelcrafter and an enchanter and there is no way in hell I’ll drop any of those painfully levelled professions.
The enchanters will get some new enchanter-only ring enchants and also be able to create some soulbound wands with spellpower, crit and some stats on them. The JC's will be able to make some BoP trinkets like the Sapphire Owl and cut some nice BoP gems, so all in all I am happy with keeping those professions for Jools.
Larue, my shaman, is like Joaq an herbalist and alchemist, potion master. The potion mastery is very handy and often procs a few extra free pots. This mastery may be slightly less useful now since the use of pots will probably diminish since the Potion Sickness means you can only use one potion per fight – no more selling a stack of Super Mana Potions for 30 gold, but it's still nice to get some free pots so I don't want to drop her Alchemy.
Again like Joaq, Larue does not really need the herbalism HoT since she can heal herself, and this is one profession that won’t hurt very much to drop on Larue since she’ll get her Alchemy needs satisfied by Joaq’s herbing anyways.
So, one possible free spot out of all 12 professions in total on my six lvl 70 girls...
There is another choice though, my lowbie hunter Cuddling is currently skinning and herbing her way through the 30's and I could drop the skinning for inscriptions. There are a few quests associated with Inscriptions and I might as well get some lvling xp out of them a well.
Ah well, I'll see what happens tomorrow :-)
Monday, October 13, 2008
Remind me again why I still play on pvp servers
Please. Do that. Tell me why I still have some chars on pvp servers, and please tell me why I still play them on occasion.
I logged in on Tesz the other day. Tesz, my level 36 troll mage that I have on the Laughing Skull (pvp) server. I hadn’t played her for some time and wanted to give my hunter Cuddling some rested bonus, so I popped in to Tesz.
She was in the inn in Tarren Mill. I checked her quest log and she had quite a few quests in the area. I’ve been peeking a little on Jame’s levelling guide and he lists a lot of quests in Hillsbrad, so I had been questing a bit there and was looking forward to doing some more.
She ran out of the inn and died. A ?? stealthed druid oneshotted her. Haha, how hilarious.
Well, the graveyard run is not long in Tarren Mill. I decided Hillsbrad would not be fun to quest in today after all, so after Tesz had ressed she started casting a teleport to Orgrimmar, and then she died again.
After having played on a sweet normal server for some months now my hard-earned reflexes like “when you know gankers are about, find a safe place to ress lest you get ganked again” seems to have been lost.
Yes, it was the same ?? druid again, some sad person with a Challenger title, that had stealthed up and oneshotted her, then he shifted into cheetah and ran away from the guards.
Elapsed time since log-in: About a minute. Number of deaths, gank-related: Two. Amount of affection felt towards pvp servers and gankers in general: Zero.
Third time up I ressed inside the inn and teleported away.
I was close to deleting the char and never look back but I decided to give it a last try, and flew off to Desolace instead, and after having completed a few quests without anyone bothering met here I headed off to Arathi Highlands, where I kept questing for yet a few hours.
In fact, that entire day I saw no Alliance chars at all save that sad druid in Tarren Mill and a lvl 31 warrior in Arathi who snuck away when he saw me and Tesz was just a few hundred xp’s away from 38 when I logged out.
And to remind myself: I play on these servers because I have some friends there, both real life and in-game ones, and although I still quest a lot by myself I don’t want to lose touch with them entirely.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Shaman vs priest healing
So, my shaman Larue dinged 70 recently and have been trying out the Resto way for a little while. I have been healing mostly on my priest and a little dabbling on the side in the druid way of healing while still specced feral. In short, I have healed very little on my shaman, and while there are many similarities to the priestly way of doing it, there are also differences and it takes some getting used to.
A brief spell comparison
(Casts times with talents, mana costs without talents, healing amount without heal bonuses, spells or effects from set bonuses, trinkets and similar not included)
Slow large heal
Priests have Greater Heal, 2,5 secs cast, 825 mana, heals for about 2550, while shamans have a similar ability, Healing Wave, 2.5 secs cast, 720 mana, heals for about 2300.
Faster smaller heal
Flash Heal for priests, 1.5 secs cast, 470 mana, heals for about 1200. Lesser Healing Wave for shamans, 1.5 secs cast, 440 mana, heals for about 1100, so not much difference here either.
HoTs
Priests have Renew, instant cast, 450 mana, ticks for 222 heals every 3 seconds (about 255 with Improved Renew)
A draenei shaman has the racial ability Gift of the Naaru, which has a 1.5 secs cast, costs no mana and heals for (your level * 15 + 35) damage in total over 15 secs, which for a level 70 character means 217 heal every 3 seconds. This spell has a 3 min cd, which makes it marginally useful unless you have some way of remembering that its cd is up and its available for use.
Shamans also have Healing Stream totems, which can be considered a form of HoT as long as the group members stay in range of it (within 30 yards if the shaman has the talent Totemic Mastery). The Healing Stream costs 90 mana to pop and heals 18 damage (23 with Restorative Totems) every 2 seconds for 2 minutes. (Its not as low as it seems, Larue's current heal bonus of 931 makes this totem heal 81 damage every 2 seconds.)However, this totem can't be used at the same time as Mana Spring totem though, they both use the water totem.
Group heals
Priests have Prayer of Healing and (if specced for it) Circle of Healing. PoH has a cast time of 2.5 secs, heals group members within 30 yards of the priest for about 1000 and costs 1070 mana. CoH is instant, heals the target and group members within 15 yards of her (not the casting priest) for about 430 and costs 450 mana.
Shamans have Chain Heal, their white lazer beam heal with a 2.5 secs cast that heals up to three targets for about 900, 450 and 225 respectively (1080, 540 and 275 with Improved Chain heal) for a cost of 540 mana.
On-damage heals
Priests have Prayer of Mending, an instant spell that for 390 mana throws a frisbee to her target. When the target takes damage the frisbee heals her for 800 damage and then jumps to another group member within 20 yards.
Shamans place an instant cast Earth Shield on their target. The shield is instant cast, costs 450 mana and stays on the target with 6 charges that heals for 270 every time the target gets hit.
Oh-shit heals
When that oh-shit moment turns up, a priest pops a Power Word: Shield on the target, quickly followed by a Flash Heal or if time permits, a Greater Heal.
When a shaman needs an emergency heal, she pops Nature's Blessing, followed by presumably a Healing Wave.
Aggro dumps
A priest has Fade, which drops her aggro level for 10 seconds, and by the time Fade fades, someone else usually has worked up enough aggro to keep the mob from going for the priest again.
A shaman has a Tranquil Air totem that she can pop. However, since this affects the entire group within range (30 yards if you have the talent Totemic Mastery) it's usefulness is very limited.
Luckily, since a shaman can wear mail she usually can take a little beating before she goes down, which hopefully gives the tank or other enough time to re-establish aggro. (As a comparison, my freshly dinged shaman in greens and blues has 7200 armor whilme my epicced-out priest has 1500).
Mana preservation and regeneration
Mana regeneration for both priests and shamans at lvl 70 are calculated in the same way. Priests have a talent, Meditation, that allows 30% of this mana regeneration to keep going while they cast. Shamans have a somewhat similar talent, Unrelenting Storm, but this is deep in the Elemental tree and out of reach for a Resto shaman.
Priests have the talent Inner Focus that gives you a free spell cast every three minutes, and also a talent Holy Concentration that may give you another freebie.
A talent in the Discipline tree, Divine Spirit, also gives a buff that improves the priest's Spirit-based mana regeneration, and the Improved version also increases the healing bonus. (This talent requires at least 21 points (23 for the Improved version) so if you choose this one you can't have the Circle of Healing from the Holy tree)
Priests also have a Shadowfiend, a pet on a 5 minute cooldown that gives the priest mana back when the pet deals damage.
Shamans have no talents for mana-free spellcasts but they have a Mana Spring totem, that for a measly 120 mana pops a totem that with Restorative Totems will replenish 2800 mana for the 2 minutes its up.
Resto shamans also get the Mana Tide totem, which has a 5 minute cd like the Shadowfiend and gives mana back to all group members withing range.
Cleansing
Priests can Cure Disease and Abolish Disease (for those nasty mobs that keep contaminating people), they can Dispel Magic and Mass Dispel (extra powahful area dispell)
Shamans can Cure Disease and pop a Disease Cleansing Totem when hanging around unwashed mobs crawling with germs. They can also Purge mobs, but can't dispel magic effects from friends. They can however Cure Poison and use Poison Cleansing Totems.
Fun-ness
I have been healing on my priest for so long now I can probably do it in my sleep (but don't tell my fellow raiders I do this! ;P) and I still enjoy it. There are certainly still things to learn and ways to improve, but overall I am pretty happy with my priest at the moment. I will not bring her to Karazhan anymore because that probably would make me fall asleep, although she still could use some of the drops in there I have been there too many times to find it even remotely fun on my priest. I save the ZA and 25-man runs for Jools, that is where I enjoy playing her the most.
Shaman healins is not yet as instinctive but it's novel and fresh and although there are many similarities it is different enough to be interesting, and I am really looking forward to honing her skills and abilities in normal and heroic 5-mans and it would be great fun to take her to Karazhan.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
How to kill a dragon
You need:
- One dragon, in this case Lethon who was walking around in Duskwood. Lethon used to be a 40-man raid world boss back in the old misty pre-TBC days, but nowadays it can be defeated by:
- One tank, lvl 70, decently geared.
- One healer, lvl 70, also decently geared.
- Lots and lots of time
How to do it:
Let the tank engage the dragon and establish aggro. Positioning is not that hard when there are only 2 people in the raid, so tank it wherever you like.
Healer, stand to the side of the dragon where you have the tank comfortably in range. Don’t go too far back because it might hit you with the tail, and don’t go too far to the front because it might spew Noxious Breath all over you.
Should the healer get caught in the green fumes, it’s not the end of the world, just remember that the debuff increases the cooldown on all your abilities so you will have to be alert and rotate your heal spells until the debuff wears off.
By virtue of standing right in front of the dragon, the tank will get caught in his breath and get the stackable debuff that also increases Nature damage taken. When the tank has the debuff he will need some extra healing. Nature resist gear helps.
Occasionally Lethon fires off a Shadowbolt Volley to one side of him. Easiest is to eat the bolts. Their damage is not worth the bother of turning the dragon around to get the bolts to the opposite side of the healer and is easily healed through with a single Renew.
The dragon also emits a green cloud of sleep gas that crawls slowly across the ground towards a raid member. This cloud sleeps anyone caught in it for 4 seconds. If the healer runs away from it, it will turn and go for the tank. The cloud’s edges are pretty well defined but you actually get the sleep debuff a bit before the cloud reaches you, which makes judging when to run away a little tricky. The tank takes the sleep without losing aggro, and the only time it’s worth running away from the cloud is when the tank has the Noxious Breath debuff, in which case a healer sleeping for 4 seconds may prove fatal.
If the healer’s mana permits (which it should), use any damage spells when possible or wand away as much as you can between heals to help dps the dragon down just a tad bit faster.
At every 25 % interval of his health, Lethon does a special ability – he summons shades, one for each raid member except the tank. These shades are immune to AoE and when they reach Lethon they will heal him a little. Kill these as soon as they spawn. In a 2-man raid you have 1 shade to take care of, which is not hard and even if you don’t kill it, the amount of health 1 shade gives to Lethon is practically negligible.
That’s it basically. Lather, rinse, repeat.
One comment though, unless you are really dead set on 2-manning the dragons, bringing an extra dps along will speed things up greatly. Won’t be as cool though, but if you are after the kill rather than the achievement, by all means do it. By the time Lethon was down to 56 %, I had used my Shadow Fiend 5 times, and since it has a cd of 5 mins, you can easily figure out how long we had been at it. Sadly, I messed up then and got caught in the sleep cloud while the tank was heavily stacked with the Noxious debuff. But we will get him next time!
Achievements
In the WotLK (or maybe in the next patch already?) I understand that so called achievements will be available. I have steered clear of reading much about the beta testing or the Wrath news that has been flooding many WoW-sites and blogs because I want it all to be fresh and new for me when I first enter Northrend, but some things I have not managed to avoid, and achievements was something that stuck.
If I understand it correctly an achievement will be some sort of in-game goal to aim for, but I don’t know if there will be any special rewards upon achieving the, er, well, achievement.
It would be nice if you could set up achievements of your own as well, like a to-do-list of things you want to achieve in-game (dammit, is there another word for this? I feel like a broken record, repeating the word all the time), and there are plenty things I have done or participated in already that feels like achievements.
Just a few basic ones here:
- Level a character to 70 – Check! Got a rogue, a druid, a warlock, a priest and a warrior to 70.
- Get Exalted with Darnassus by level 40 and get a tiger mount – Check! My shaman got Exalted at around level 35 and has never had to ride around on a huge ugly elekk mount.
- Get Exalted with Darnassus by level 30 and get a tiger mount – Don’t know yet. My draenei hunter is working on it but is still 6 k away at lvl 29,5.
- Tame a lvl 10 bat from Ghostlands with your lvl 10 hunter after having run all the way from Ironforge – Check! (With a little help from my darling husband through WPL and EPL)
- Dressing your bank alt in fancy clothes by doing the Valentine’s Day quest and running her at lvl 1 from Ironforge to Hillsbrad Foothills – Check! My bankalt gained 2 levels and a hot evening dress from that trek.
- Doing a full Karazhan clear in less than 3 hours – Check! (Well, except the animal boss in the servants’ quarters)
- Doing a heroic Steam Vaults run in less than 45 minutes – Check! As we zoned in we were told that “this instance will reset in 45 minutes”. When Kali'thresh lay dead on the floor we still had 10 minutes left on that timer.
- Doing a raid on a Horde capital and kill their leader – Half-check! (Raid part done, on Orgrimmar and Silvermoon City, but sadly the leaders escaped with their lives)
- Getting Exalted with Stormpike Guard without permanent mental damage from the small-minded viciousness floating around in bgchat – Check! (I think, not that I care what you say, l2play f***ing noob!)
- Getting Exalted with the Wintersabre trainers in Winterspring for a pretty lavender mount – Check! My pink-pig-tailed warrior now rides happily around on her precious tiger.
The list can go on and on, the entire WoW way of playing is so much based upon achieving things (rep, honor, items, skills, levels) so I guess that if you want to, you can find an achievement to fulfil and a reason to celebrate every day.
So, what are your achievements?
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Mana-macros
In light of all the announced coming changes to buffs and debuffs in a raid environment I feel it is a bit unsafe to write more about what to do to keep your mana up when raiding.
Except for one thing - how to save mana by actually using the abilities and trinkets that you have equipped.
My memory is excellent! - only very short! So I rely a lot on macros and addons to help me remember to squeeze those nice on-use abilities out of my gear.
I have the talent Inner Focus from the Discipline tree. This talent gives me a free spell every three minutes.
Now, there are two ways to use this one - either save it for those oh-shit-situations when you need a heal NOW and you have absolutely no mana left, or you use it every time it's up.
I go for the latter alternative, and it helps me stay out of the 5-second rule and thus regenerate more mana, hopefully avoiding those oh-shit situations altogehter.
I have macroed Inner Foocus to my heal spells, like for example Greater Heal.
/cast Inner Focus
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal
Every time I click the macro, it tries to cast Inner Focus. If it's available, good, the blue spiral spell effect flashes and I begin to cast a mana-free Greater Heal. If Inner Focus is on cooldown, I get an error message but I cast a Greater Heal anyways, using mana for it.
The first conditionals, [target=mouseover, help], makes me cast the macroed spell on my mouseover target if it's friendly.
The second conditionals, [ ], is for when I don't have a mouse-over target or I do have one but it's hostile, in which case the macro behaves like a plain /cast Greater Heal, casting it on my current target or myself if I have no selected target and auto-self-cast enabled.
For added clarity, I put #showtooltip Greater Heal at the top of the macro. This shows me the usual spell tooltip when I mouseover the icon.
I also use the stopcasting technique for my Greater Heals, so I have put a /stopcasting before the actual /cast Greater Heal. This means that every time I click the macro I restart the cast.
(Why do I do this? you may ask.
I do this because of the 2,5 seconds cast time for Greater Heal. When you are on tank healing duty and don't want to waste mana and drop a full Gheal on an almost topped-off tank, you interrupt the spell and start casting it again right away.
You also don't want to wait around until the tank gets noticeable damage, because if you don't have a Gheal in the pipe already by then, those 2,5 seconds will feel like an eternity and you might end up with a dead tank.
So, start casting Gheal by clicking the Gheal macro. If the cast is almost at the end and the tank is still at almost full heal, click the macro once again to abort the cast and start it again. If the tank is taking damage, finish the cast and heal him up. Rinse and repeat.)
The macro now looks like this:
#showtooltip Greater Heal
/cast Inner Focus
/stopcasting
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal
But wait! Being a lazy twit efficient healer I have put even more in my macros XD. You are allowed to use 255 characters in every macro so why not make the most of it?
I have three trinkets that I use when healing: Essence of the Martyr, Vial of the Sunwell and Figurine - Seaspray Albatross. All of them have very nice on-use effects - if you remember to use them.
Same here as for the Inner Focus spell, hold on to the trinkets or use them? It's like a bottle of wine, either you save it for that extra special occasion that might never happen and it may even turn rancid and yukky, or you drink it and turn that mundane tuesday evening into a sweet mellow night.
So I put my trinkets in my macro like this:
#showtooltip Greater Heal
/cast Inner Focus
/stopcasting
/use Vial of the Sunwell
/use Essence of the Martyr
/use Figurine - Seaspray Albatross
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal
I get an error message saying Item is not ready yet or You must equip that item to use it, but the spellcast is not hindered.
I have macroed all my heal spells like this now, on the philosophy that it's better with a mellow tuesday afternoon that happens over and over than an extra special saturday night party that might never come ;P
(The /stopcasting is only used in the Gheal macro though, since it's useless in instant spell macros like for Renew, Prayer of Mending and Circle of Healing and I don't want to accidentally interrupt any casts of Flash Heal, Prayer of Healing or Binding Heal.)
Edit: *slaps head* Forgot one vital part of this macro! There's really no use in burning all your spell and trinket cooldowns unless you are in combat, so I have added the conditional [combat] before every spell cast or trinket use.
The macro now looks like this:
#showtooltip Greater Heal
/cast [combat] Inner Focus
/stopcasting
/use [combat] Vial of the Sunwell
/use [combat] Essence of the Martyr
/use [combat] Figurine - Seaspray Albatross
/cast [target=mouseover, help] [ ] Greater Heal
This way I won't pop the cd's just by shooting a frisbee to the tank before he engages a mob, when I am still full of mana.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Bye Bye Vashj
Some months ago I moved Jools over from the pvp server Vashj to the pve server Aerie Peak.
The reason for this was that I really enjoyed playing her but she very rarely got any invites to runs or raids when she could attend because the healer spots were usually filled by badge-bloated officer healers.
I played a lot with some out-of guild friends, but they were doing the more hardcore raiding every night and I was feeling a little lonely.
So I moved her.
This was the first time I played seriously on a pve server, and I got a serious woot! Is this for real?? experience!
There were never any problem summoning raiders or replacement cause of summoning stone wars. It actually took me several Kara runs to realise that half the people outside at the stone were Horde!
While I still felt that initial adrenaline rush upon seeing a Horde when out questing, it petered out when I realised that they would not try to kill me, not now, not when I was attacking a quest mob, not ever.
Suddenly, whole areas of gameplay opened up again. I created a new alt and I will take her through Stranglethorn Vale again, a place that I really loved with that jungle theme and abundance of quests, but I have not been lvling there for years because the sheer amount of ganking I’ve experienced there.
My warrior dinged 70 just some weeks ago, and while it was pretty ok doing the last lvls in Outland since there was hardly any people around, Horde or Alliance, I dread the coming of the Wrath of the Lick King, when the new areas will be filled with people levelling, questing and - ganking.
Sure, I realise that you can accidentally flag yourself for pvp in various ways and get killed by a player of the opposite faction, but in almost all of my pv server encounters with Horde I won’t have to worry about that.
So, I was thinking of moving the rest of the flock over to Aerie Peak too. I have spent my entire time on Vashj detesting gankers and now I will get an awful lot of time to spend on playing instead of swearing, corpse running or moving to another area to quest.
The fact that sort of clinched it though, was that the guild I joined with Jools turned out to be a collection of real sweet and fun people! I didn’t have to worry that I wouldn’t find any new friends because I already had!
So I started sorting out my bags and told my Vashj friends about my plans. I will miss them but I feel this is the right way for me to go. It’s a bit expensive though, Blizzard charges 20 Euro per transfer, so I am looking at a total cost of 120 Euros, but I have no doubt at all it will be money well spent!
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Srs raiding is the shit!
I stopped by Cenarion Post and picked up a brand new pretty feathered speed-bird for my srs raiding priest and then I flew off on said bird to the Coilfang reservoir and swam down the drainpipe to be ready and prepared, yes sir!, outside Serpentshrine Cavern at 2015 sharp yesterday.
I had a big picnic basket with me, 100 Sacred Candles with me, 20 charges of Superior Mana Oil, 5 Flasks of Mighty Restoration and more Golden Fish Sticks than even the most devout lover of fish'n chips could devour in a lifetime.
- Read up on tactics? Check.
- Repaired? Check.
- Bags full of mana pots? Check.
I Was Prepared.
Going to be raiding srsly two days a week now, Mondays and Wednesdays from 20.30 til whenever are now marked Do Not Disturb in my calendar, in the company of 24 more like-minded people in the Raid Core of Jools' otherwise casual Aerie Peak guild.
Yesterday was the kick-off for the Raid Core after the summer holidays, and we were going to Serpentshrine Cavern to kick the tender asses of the Lurker and Leotheras the Blind.
Was I nervous? Yes. Was I thrilled? Yes.
I had been on a Lurker kill before, after a wipeless Maggy kill followed by a successful High King Maulgar and Gruul kill, when we were all high on success and raid adrenaline and kept going to SSC and the lurking fish boss there, so I wasn't too worried about that fight.
I remembered some basic facts of SSC, like don't jump down the elevator, don't fall into the water, stay out of the green mist when the Bog giants die, and such, so the trash pulls went by pretty fast and I kept my tank alive without a fuss.
What is very important about the Lurker fight, btw? That's right, jump into the water when he takes a deep breath and stay there until he has finished spouting.
This was an ah, right-moment for me as he took his deep breath and aimed straight for me when he stared spouting. Result:
But I since wasn't the only one that kicked the bucket that fight we ressed, buffed up and fished that scaled monster out of his hidey-hole again.
What are the odds of the damned slimy boss taking that deep breath of his and immediately start spouting at the very same person (=me!) that just happens to be slightly slow jumping off the island.
Very high, it seems...
Wasn't that bad though, I had a rather good view of the fireworks from my position safely away from the action ;P
After we got our revenged and looted phat epix from the dead pile of stinking scales and fishbone, we headed onwards!
And who is to say that the guild spirit is not one for all and all for one? When one of the tanks got knocked into the water and the trash mob followed him there, he was first joined by a healer and a dps to help beat him down. After the rest of us had taken the mobs still on the platform down we all followed suit, like a flock of lemmings we threw ourselves down into the water!
Leo was a bit of a badass though, and sadly he lived to see another day while we got seriously pwned by him.
Possible reasons why we didn't kill him:
- seasoned raiders were a bit rusty and new ones were a bit unused to the chaotic havoc-wreaking and dazzling, screaming fireworks (it is very different from the 10-man raids)
- general bad luck
- and of course the general scape-goat: LAG! (although sadly I can't blame my mistakes yesterday on that because it was totally lag-free)
- hmm can't really think of any other reason...:)
But his respite won't last long, tomorrow we will take him down!!
I got an unexpected surprise as well in there, one of my friends from my old pvp server popped in on a newly created lvl 2 alt just to say hello!!
What I Learned From Yesterday's Raiding
from my own and my fellow raiders experiences and (mis-)fortunes.
1. Warlocks are handy. They will summon you back up to the platforms if you are a noob and fall into the water and an even bigger noob and can't find your way up.
2. If you die on the elevator down and your dead body goes up and down on it, don't accept a friendly ress unless the platform is at the bottom.
3. If you don't kill off your Inner Demon fast enough and end up being mind-controlled, and the raid wipes before they can kill you off, you end up being mind-controlled for the entire 10 minutes, after which you just die.
4. Don't pull more than one trash pack at a time.
5. If you rely on BigWigs or some similar boss mod to help you time your actions, do remember to enable it for the particualr raid instance you are in.
Hmm think that's all for now, folks, will undoubtedly have more words of wisdom to share after tomorrow.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Gem from bgchat
You know, too often bg chat is full of morons spewing filth around, accusing everyone but themselves to be clueless noobs and that this bg will be lost due to that.
Well, once in a while you just happen to see a conversation that, due to some hilarious timing of events, just makes you laugh. I happened upon such a conversation today as I was doing some last honor grinds for my Runed Ornate Ruby, and I even had the presence of mind to screenshot it.
Enjoy!
The hilariousness of someone complaining that people were not coming down to join him at Frostwolf Keep while at the same time failing to defend a tower at said Keep was certainly not lost on me or many others in this bg ;P
(And no, he was not the only one down there by far, so he didn't lose the tower due to overwhelming Horde forces.)
