Saturday 23 February 2008

Wipe night 2

A nice and easy kill of High King Maulgar on the second attempt had us all confident going into Gruul. And we then just wiped over and over.

To start with we were losing dps, presumably to Cave Ins and Shatter, but once that was sorted out we started losing tanks early in the fight, well before Growths should have been a problem.

Hopefully we now know Maulgar well enough that we can get to Gruul quickly, and we'll get him down eventually. I just wonder if, after this slightly demoralising wipe night, we'll fill the raid so easily next time.

Thursday 21 February 2008

Drawn to the Alliance

I'm quite keen to establish an Alliance character I feel comfortable with. My younger stepson was in Deadmines the other day with his dwarf paladin, in a group with 2 other dwarf pallies, a Nelf hunter and someone else. A couple of things struck me -
  1. Being in a group with a bunch of dwarfs is just much more appealing than a motley collection of undead and trolls. This is really down to my paper-based RPG background than anything else, but it just feels more right.
  2. I really like the way the camera height reflects your character, so as a dwarf a Nelf is really tall.
Hopefully my Alliance persona will turn out to be my hunter (since he's 49 already), but perhaps I'll find out after my ST experiment that healers are really who I am.

On the other hand there's something a bit sappy about the Alliance. Strength and Honour!

To Hunter, or not to Hunter?

As I mentioned in the comments to a post about alts over on Kinless's blog, I find there's something slightly unengaging about hunters. You're slightly above the action, as you have little sense of danger, which makes things less fun somehow.

On the other hand this is one of the great strengths of the class. My hunter is currently level 49, and just starting on the Dragonscale Leatherworking specialisation quest. For this he needs 10 worn dragonscales, which drop off level 50+ elite dragonkin. The quest is red to him, but I'm currently on 4/10 scales and haven't yet died. He can flat out-dps the casters, or if feeling cautious use a combination of aggro sharing and Viper Sting to take practically no damage. The melee are a bit more time consuming, but with some good kiting they're equally killable. This ability to do stuff solo which would be painful or downright impossible on most other classes tells me he's worth sticking with.

My current thinking is to get to level 50 and then go to Sunken Temple with a same-level guild group (if possible) to do the class quest. Hopefully this will give me an idea of how I feel about instancing with a dedicated DPS class, and also how well I enjoy being a hunter in a decent group.

Monday 11 February 2008

Curator glove token

finally drops...

... and I roll last out of the two other shaman and the paladin in the raid.

Relying on drops really sucks, although I shouldn't complain too much after winning the t4 shoulders the other day. The Prince didn't cooperate either - another priest / warrior / druid token, but I did get the healing mail legs from the Chess event, another reason not to grumble. I'm going to keep going to Kara for at least another 18 badges, and either the t4 gloves or helm, to get the first set bonus, but I've definitely farmed the fun out of it now. Or maybe I just shouldn't raid when I'm tired.

Badge loot is a much happier solution, although it tends to reduce the variety a little. But then again, that'd come down to another "kill 10 fozzles" type quest again, if all there was was badge loot.

Saturday 9 February 2008

Progress at last

After a long lay-off from 25 man raiding my guild finally made another visit to Gruul's Lair on Thursday night. With High King Maulgar it's all in the pull, and we generally weren't doing that part well. In the first hour we had one attempt that at least seemed to go OK at first, however after the Seer was down and the Warlock was below 50%, it all started to go wrong. We knew it was going to be a wipe but the DPS managed to kill Olm too. All the other attempts had failed much more quickly, and for a while it looked like the attempt with two adds down out of four would be the high point of the evening. The rest of the time we always seemed to lose either the main tank or the mage tank early on, at which point we were doomed.

Finally after re-clearing the trash we had an attempt were the mage tank and MT stayed alive, and although we lost the Olm tanks we managed to kill him and after that it all became simple. Adds three and four went down very fast and we were onto Maulgar. We were a bit worried about our mana levels, and that we had less than 20 of the raid still standing, but he also went down nice and smoothly. Much rejoicing in Vent and guild chat, tinged with a slight hint of disbelief.

Just to top off my evening I won my t4 shoulders with a roll of 100, so that's my luck used up for a while. I forget how many times I've killed the Curator, with never a sign of the shaman gloves, so I'm amazed I got the shoulders on the first kill.

We went on to Gruul, with two attempts (54% and 8%) before we had to break for the night, so his days are definitely numbered assuming we can get more consistent with the High King.

Looking forward to more guild first kills!

Sunday 3 February 2008

Finally!

Attumen gave up his Whirlwind Bracers, so I'm slightly less bitter about Karazhan.

Still no token for me from the Curator though, so the grudge is still there. It was a good run - a paladin tank, two mages and a warlock made short work of the trash, and Nightbane was a good, challenging and ultimately successful fight, everything a boss should be. I was really enjoying my role as a healing shaman, with chain heal working its wonders on Nightbane and the Curator, and Nature's Swiftness, Bloodlust and my fire elemental all helping along the way.

Meanwhile my NE hunter is up to level 48, with a shiny new bow and 227 points in leatherworking. On balance I'm still for the Horde, although my biggest tie is to my guild. The Alliance definitely have things going for them though - Aerie Peak and other dwarf architecture, and the temple in Darnassus which I had to visit at the end of a quest are particularly cool, and you don't get time to appreciate them when you visit as a Hordie.