On Saturday I got the last few hundred gold together and finally got the epic flying skill, plus a fast yellow griffon. I took it for a quick spin around Shadowmoon Valley (remember that zone?), and was rather underwhelmed, but logging on today and travelling the familiar routes of the Sons of Hodir dailies I really noticed the world of difference it makes. Buyer's remorse averted...!
Still more gold grinding to go though - I had a good night in Naxx 25 last Wednesday, so enchants on my new mace from Malygos, and the helm and gloves from Naxx, plus finally getting my cloak enchanted will set me back around 670g. Then there's dual talent specs, and the dragon mount from Wyrmrest Accord and I've around 3200g to find from somewhere. On the plus side I'll definitely be exhalted with the Sons of Hodir by the time I'm finished.
Monday, 4 May 2009
Monday, 27 April 2009
Finished WoW 3.0.9
Last night I finally joined a guild run to Malygos, and we downed him on the second attempt. So I've now "finished" pre-3.1 WoW, at least as far as raid content goes.
I'm (possibly excessively) impressed by how the Aces High daily prepares you for phase 3 of the fight. Although it's rather different in a group setting compared to the solo quest it does save you from the initial "What do all these buttons do?" moment. I also really like the setting and the pre-pull quotes, you really get a feeling of confronting a powerful creature in his own domain and how that may not be such a good idea.
The Vortex ability is a complete pain to heal, what with only shamans having one instant-cast heal. Still, we're better off than paladin's I suppose (unless I'm well out of date with regard to paladin spells). I also find phase 3 completely disorientating, but perhaps I'll get used to that.
As a footnote, one of the good things about being so far behind my guild in terms of gearing and general raid attendance, I was the only needer for Ice Spire Scepter when it dropped. Two more blues to go...
Good stuff about the fight
I'm (possibly excessively) impressed by how the Aces High daily prepares you for phase 3 of the fight. Although it's rather different in a group setting compared to the solo quest it does save you from the initial "What do all these buttons do?" moment. I also really like the setting and the pre-pull quotes, you really get a feeling of confronting a powerful creature in his own domain and how that may not be such a good idea.
Bad things about the fight
The Vortex ability is a complete pain to heal, what with only shamans having one instant-cast heal. Still, we're better off than paladin's I suppose (unless I'm well out of date with regard to paladin spells). I also find phase 3 completely disorientating, but perhaps I'll get used to that.
As a footnote, one of the good things about being so far behind my guild in terms of gearing and general raid attendance, I was the only needer for Ice Spire Scepter when it dropped. Two more blues to go...
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Why I love my guild
WoW has slightly lost its lustre recently. The gear upgrades are slowly coming in, but my main objective has been to finally gather the 5000g needed for my epic flying mount, which has made the game seem more like a chore at times.
In the meantime my secondary goal has been to finish off the remaining heroics that I'd not yet completed. I had some luck in the last couple of days in that two of my remaining three targets (Halls of Stone and Oculus) were the daily heroics so groups for them were suddenly popular.
Obligatory HoS anecdote - our guild (and probably most people in general) are rather overgeared for heroics at this point, to they tend to be reasonably easy. One early pull suddenly got interesting, then serious - it looked like we'd rescue it for a while but then we wiped. It turns out we'd somehow managed to pull 3 groups, and then aggro a patrolling giant. But only that level of problem, or some of the crazier achievements, keep these runs challenging.
Oculus was well worth doing the once, but did show why people avoid it when possible. Myself and one other member of the PUG I was in hadn't been there on normal difficulty either, which made the experience harder still. We wiped several times on the final boss, beyond the point that probably be tolerated by an average PUG, but did eventually succeed. The one saving grace of the instance appears to be that not only is it much easier than average to get to the last boss from the entrance following a wipe, but also (since your drake is doing the fighting, and if you have enough bag space) you need not be taking gear damage for failed attempts.
Finally to the point of this post - having finished Oculus, rather late in the evening, I noticed in my achievements list that my remaining incomplete instance - Drak'Tharon - was only missing a kill of King Dred. I mentioned this in passing in guild chat, to which one of our nearly-always-online players replied "Well let's go and kill him then" and offered to bring his tank, our raid leader volunteered to dps on one of his alts and a second dps slot was quickly filled. We had to do some badgering to fill the last dps slot (which bizarrely seems to be the hardest spot to fill these days), but in relatively short order had a solid group together and proceeded to clear the place.
My guild - always willing to help (even when it's quite late at night).
In the meantime my secondary goal has been to finish off the remaining heroics that I'd not yet completed. I had some luck in the last couple of days in that two of my remaining three targets (Halls of Stone and Oculus) were the daily heroics so groups for them were suddenly popular.
Obligatory HoS anecdote - our guild (and probably most people in general) are rather overgeared for heroics at this point, to they tend to be reasonably easy. One early pull suddenly got interesting, then serious - it looked like we'd rescue it for a while but then we wiped. It turns out we'd somehow managed to pull 3 groups, and then aggro a patrolling giant. But only that level of problem, or some of the crazier achievements, keep these runs challenging.
Oculus was well worth doing the once, but did show why people avoid it when possible. Myself and one other member of the PUG I was in hadn't been there on normal difficulty either, which made the experience harder still. We wiped several times on the final boss, beyond the point that probably be tolerated by an average PUG, but did eventually succeed. The one saving grace of the instance appears to be that not only is it much easier than average to get to the last boss from the entrance following a wipe, but also (since your drake is doing the fighting, and if you have enough bag space) you need not be taking gear damage for failed attempts.
Finally to the point of this post - having finished Oculus, rather late in the evening, I noticed in my achievements list that my remaining incomplete instance - Drak'Tharon - was only missing a kill of King Dred. I mentioned this in passing in guild chat, to which one of our nearly-always-online players replied "Well let's go and kill him then" and offered to bring his tank, our raid leader volunteered to dps on one of his alts and a second dps slot was quickly filled. We had to do some badgering to fill the last dps slot (which bizarrely seems to be the hardest spot to fill these days), but in relatively short order had a solid group together and proceeded to clear the place.
My guild - always willing to help (even when it's quite late at night).
Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Naxx clear
Part two of our raid from Sunday has just finished, and given Grulnak his first clear of Naxx.
Sapphiron wiped us twice before we downed him, so getting him on the third attempt felt really good. Kel'Thuzad by contrast was a bit of an anti-climax, as apart from one player failing the "don't step in the red stuff" test it never felt like he'd beat us.
The other highlight of the evening was doing the Four Horsemen the fast / proper way, with myself and just 1 dps tanking the ranged bosses. There's something I like about that sort of assignment - partly the individual responsibility, but also the way that you know your job is done when the rest of the raid turn up and start helping out. Reminds me a bit of one of my first proper raid experiences, healing an add tank on Gehennas in Molten Core.
The lowlight had to be that we got bitten again by the token gremlin with two more tier 7 "Lost Vanquisher" tokens that we couldn't use.
Overall my feeling is that Naxx is much, much easier than Karazhan ever was, probably excessively so (albeit that I like that raiding is more accessible now). Before the Wrath-is-coming final raiding nerf some bosses were always challenging, or at least required you to be on your toes, even when we outgeared them - the Prince, Netherspite's beams, Nightbane with the Charred Earth, even Aran if you got bad timing with the polymorph / elementals part. Currently in Naxx, with our group that still needs a fair number of drops from there and is by no means overgeared, and usually with one or two players learning the occasional boss, as long as everything is set up correctly we generally one-shot a boss, and failing that get them the second time. Aggroing a patrol while clearing trash is "oh, time to pay attention" rather than "oh, #@!%". I need some more gear before I'm ready for Malygos and more still for Ulduar, but already I feel I'm done with Naxx 10.
Although the Undying title would be nice.
Sapphiron wiped us twice before we downed him, so getting him on the third attempt felt really good. Kel'Thuzad by contrast was a bit of an anti-climax, as apart from one player failing the "don't step in the red stuff" test it never felt like he'd beat us.
The other highlight of the evening was doing the Four Horsemen the fast / proper way, with myself and just 1 dps tanking the ranged bosses. There's something I like about that sort of assignment - partly the individual responsibility, but also the way that you know your job is done when the rest of the raid turn up and start helping out. Reminds me a bit of one of my first proper raid experiences, healing an add tank on Gehennas in Molten Core.
The lowlight had to be that we got bitten again by the token gremlin with two more tier 7 "Lost Vanquisher" tokens that we couldn't use.
Overall my feeling is that Naxx is much, much easier than Karazhan ever was, probably excessively so (albeit that I like that raiding is more accessible now). Before the Wrath-is-coming final raiding nerf some bosses were always challenging, or at least required you to be on your toes, even when we outgeared them - the Prince, Netherspite's beams, Nightbane with the Charred Earth, even Aran if you got bad timing with the polymorph / elementals part. Currently in Naxx, with our group that still needs a fair number of drops from there and is by no means overgeared, and usually with one or two players learning the occasional boss, as long as everything is set up correctly we generally one-shot a boss, and failing that get them the second time. Aggroing a patrol while clearing trash is "oh, time to pay attention" rather than "oh, #@!%". I need some more gear before I'm ready for Malygos and more still for Ulduar, but already I feel I'm done with Naxx 10.
Although the Undying title would be nice.
Monday, 23 March 2009
The RNG hates us
Interesting Naxx run last night, the upside of which was that, on my second visit to Heigan, I seem to have the dance down pat. No excuses from now on...
The downside was the loot drops, which were a bit of a travisty. Our group consisted of 3 shamans, 3 priests, 2 paladins a warrior and a lock. So of course both tier 7 tokens that dropped were the Lost Vanquisher - Rogue, Death Knight, Mage and Druid!
All the non-plate healing gear that dropped I also had, except that I replaced my ilevel 200 blue leather helm with Noth's Curse. All in all, the Random Number Generator was not shining on us.
The lack of mages or hunters also made Gluth a bit interesting, but between a paladin tank (well, more a paladin aggro-and-run-away) and my frost shock and earthbind we managed the adds just fine and one-shotted him. In fact we one-shotted all the bosses except for the Grand Widow, where our attempt to get the Momma Said Knock You Out achievement didn't go so well.
Back on Tuesday for part two, which seeing as we've cleared 2 2/3 wings already should give me my first Naxx clear.
The downside was the loot drops, which were a bit of a travisty. Our group consisted of 3 shamans, 3 priests, 2 paladins a warrior and a lock. So of course both tier 7 tokens that dropped were the Lost Vanquisher - Rogue, Death Knight, Mage and Druid!
All the non-plate healing gear that dropped I also had, except that I replaced my ilevel 200 blue leather helm with Noth's Curse. All in all, the Random Number Generator was not shining on us.
The lack of mages or hunters also made Gluth a bit interesting, but between a paladin tank (well, more a paladin aggro-and-run-away) and my frost shock and earthbind we managed the adds just fine and one-shotted him. In fact we one-shotted all the bosses except for the Grand Widow, where our attempt to get the Momma Said Knock You Out achievement didn't go so well.
Back on Tuesday for part two, which seeing as we've cleared 2 2/3 wings already should give me my first Naxx clear.
Saturday, 21 March 2009
The Wyrmrest Accord
Exalted with the dragon folk now. A nice pair of gloves, and (once I've found another 4000g) a rather cool new flying mount.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
D-P-S
For some reason (perhaps that we're generally older than the average player) our guild rarely has a shortage of healers, and at the moment seems to be quite full of tanks. Consequently in the last couple of days the later evening heroic runs tend to be looking for DPS more than anything else, and having reasonably decent elemental gear (a lot of which is my raid resto gear) and not being due to raid for a week or so I thought I'd respec and try a different role.
Having done three runs over a couple of nights as a DPSer, my general impression was that I'd rather be healing!
In Wrath, as a damage dealer, you're judged pretty much entirely on your damage output, and mine is frankly not really up to it at the moment. Partly this is lack of practice (and no doubt skill), partly it's that I'm not really fully prepared - I still have my healing glyphs and enchants, so I'm not properly optimised, and also I've not specifically targeted damage gear on previous instance runs so have a lot of wasted mp5 and consequently I'm lacking in other areas. Although that said my raid gear (when viewed as elemental gear) is as good if not better than would be expected on someone just starting out on heroics.
Although damage output has always been a primary consideration, previously the mark of a good DPSer was the other aspects of their class - the ability of a hunter to chain trap, for example, or a quick-thinking rogue pulling a lose mob off the healer. In Wrath, with AoE tanking, crowd control is rare if not totally absent, so the damage meter is all that counts.
I did enjoy raiding Karazhan as shadow on Tukkillen, but there at least was wanted for shackles on Moroes, and group buffing with Vampiric Embrace / Vampiric Touch.
So, for now, it's back to healing.
Having done three runs over a couple of nights as a DPSer, my general impression was that I'd rather be healing!
In Wrath, as a damage dealer, you're judged pretty much entirely on your damage output, and mine is frankly not really up to it at the moment. Partly this is lack of practice (and no doubt skill), partly it's that I'm not really fully prepared - I still have my healing glyphs and enchants, so I'm not properly optimised, and also I've not specifically targeted damage gear on previous instance runs so have a lot of wasted mp5 and consequently I'm lacking in other areas. Although that said my raid gear (when viewed as elemental gear) is as good if not better than would be expected on someone just starting out on heroics.
Although damage output has always been a primary consideration, previously the mark of a good DPSer was the other aspects of their class - the ability of a hunter to chain trap, for example, or a quick-thinking rogue pulling a lose mob off the healer. In Wrath, with AoE tanking, crowd control is rare if not totally absent, so the damage meter is all that counts.
I did enjoy raiding Karazhan as shadow on Tukkillen, but there at least was wanted for shackles on Moroes, and group buffing with Vampiric Embrace / Vampiric Touch.
So, for now, it's back to healing.
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