Friday, January 29, 2010

Disapointing 25man raid

Last night, was a guild-alliance reunion raid event.

But it turned into a disappointment for me. We were not able to down the Northrend Beasts. :(

Yes it was great seeing all the old names from months past again. Everyone is shiny new gear, purpled-hued. But for some reason, we just coulf not get the cohesiveness going and after 7 wipes in 2 hours called it a night.

We had two very close attempts were we got Icehowl to within his last 10%, but just could not finish him off.

In the morning after, I think going with 5 healers instead of 6 was what made us unsuccessful. Most of us are geared for 10man raids. The 25man is a step up and losing 2 or even 3 healers out of 5, left us gasping for mana to raid heal.

Lesson learned. When doing progression raids, bring more healers to allow for a more forgiving run.

/Salute to our Partner in Raids, the Legion of Heroes (Arygos)

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Battered Hilt adventure

During my various PUG adventures on my army of alts, I experienced a trill that I thought would be denied me for a long time.... in Heroic Pit of Saron, a trash undead mob dropped the Battered Hilt... This starts a quest that reward you with a ilvl 251 weapon of your choice... and a truly epic store/lore to go with it.

After a couple of weeks of internal debate, I decided to use the quest to upgrade my Druid's weaponry. I initially thought of getting her the tank/DPS staff, but ended up pursuing the caster/healer main hand mace. (I found I could tank as a Druid, I just preferred to heal with her - exactly the opposite of my paladin).

So over the past couple of weeks, I slowly but steadily advanced the quest line, until I hit the two big roadblocks. Having to -reforge the weapon in Pit of Saron, and then temper it in Forge of Souls instances... My Druid has never done them. Well well...

I put my self up as healer looking ONLY to run Forge of Souls (since that is required to unlocked Pit of Saron), and found a quick running PUG team. I was able to heal it pretty easily on Heroic (much to my surprise). Biggest trouble was the huge 5 pull packs and the AE ghosts near the final boss. Boss fights were easy.

Success.

Couple of nights later I once again braved the PUG line using DF tool for Pit of Saron. I only needed the 1st boss to forge the weapon, and had both tanked and healed the fight with my Paladin and Priest - so I was well educated on the fight). Still some how, I died, but we took him down. After a rezz from the tanking paladin, I was able to reforge Quel-Deran. Now to get it tempered... (We did complete the run and I got a caster staff from the final boss... talk about adding insult to an injury! I'm got to replace it soon! :( )

Over the weekend, I got a guild group to run Forge of Souls with me to get the blade tempered. The team breezed through the instance, and I was able to temper the blade in the chamber with the final boss.

The last steps of the quest line took my back to the Sunwell instance. After defending/assisting a long dead Sun Elf, I got permission to throw the blade into the Sunwell. After an interesting scripted piece, I got my reward: Hammer of Purified Flame


Not as imposing the the sword versions of the quest rewards, but its mine. :D


/cheer

Friday, January 15, 2010

Saurfang is a pain.

Our guild's 10man team assaulted Icecrown Citadel last night for my second run with the raid group. The group is 3 healers (Priest, Shammie, Paladin), 2 tanks, 5 DPS (3 melee, 2 ranged).

My 1st attempt at healing the 1st boss Morrogar, went off without a hitch. I think we lost 1 DPS, but downed him pretty quickly. The 2nd boss Lady Deathwhisperer was also 1shotted with 2 deaths in the raid, and we rolled the battleship event without any problems.

People got a couple of upgrades.. and then we hit the final boss of the 1st wing, Saurfang. BAM! We had a good hour left on our schedule, and feeling confident after our success with the 1st three...

Wow.. we had 5 or 6 attempts - each with a wipe. But we learned a lot about the encounter. Definitely need to fine tune our strategy a bit, and makes sure nobody gives him any runic power, because that debuff of him is a killer.

But my Priest's gear is doing very well. Only have a couple of ilvl 200 pieces left I need to get rid off. I have 2 Triumph emblem pieces to get and then 2 Frost emblem pieces, and 2 craftable pieces (that is going to cost a boatload of gold due to the orbs needed). I just hope to win some upgrades that will preclude spending crazy amount of gold. :D

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Cataclysm - Plans?

Considering the success I had at predicting what patch 3.3 would force on the Wow playing community, lets see what I can do for Cataclysm.

Patch 3.3: My prediction that tanks and healers were going to be kings of the Dungeon Finder tool, was spot-on. On my battlegroup, I am experiencing almost insta-queues on my tanks, about 1-5minutes with Healers and did not even try to queue as DPS (through guild chat - it appeared to be 10-30minutes depending on time of day).

So my decision to respec some of my toons to tanks and heals - up my playtime vs sitting in dalaran waiting.

So Cataclysm... What impact will it have on playstyle?
I suspect the race up to max level (85) will dominate most players initially. But then the question on how master levels and the various paths work? I think these might "force" altoholics like myself, to focus on a single character or maximum 3 characters for development. Just gearing up is not going to be enough - you'll need to have certain role specific master level abilities as well.

However, playing alts is going to assist with guild leveling, far more than end-game raiding will (I think). But, until the mechanics of how guild level, and how members contribute are not explained in more detail, we can only guess and assume.

The reason why I think that alts will drive guild leveling, is that it is much easier to earn achievements on a low-level atls, vs a max-level character.. Aka there is much more un-explored achievements to get for a new toon vs a max-level.

My personal plans?
I definitely plan to roll a Worgen Warlock (my only class I have not played over level 20). I might even pay to get my druid race changed to a Worgen...
But getting atleast my paladin and priest to max level 1st will be my priorities. Instances and raid need to be tanked and healed :D

And I aim to capitalized on the shortage to maximize my playtime.

Friday, January 8, 2010

I found a new Hero!

Kalon over at Thinktank made the following post a while ago:
http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/2009/12/druid-lfg-system-and-being-elitist-tank.html

Yes yes and YES! On my paladin tank I agree (although I am not quite at his top-gear level), but crappy, complaining DPS gets the kick-vote very very quickly.