We'd been planning to have a second attempt at Void Reaver, but as he was bugged in the patch we decided to go for Magtheridon instead. Our level of progression may not be all that impressive for some I'd imagine, but we are fairly happy with it especially as we killed him (it?) on our first night.
We got the hand of the fight routine on the third or fourth attempt, but then had problems with interrupts when our clickers were trying to click the cubes. At that point we'd lose loads of people to the blast, and wipe. This happened several more times, but eventually we got him.
Lost the roll for the tier 4 chest piece, but most importantly was there for a guild first kill!
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Saturday, 22 March 2008
Solo Lower Blackrock Spire
I spent some time recently in LBRS, gathering gems for the UBRS key. I'm not sure if it's been made easier than it used to be, as all the bosses dropped a gem on my first kill. That certainly never used to happen, and you then had to roll for the gem against other members of your group. Or I could have just got a lucky streak.
A 0/20/41 spec turned out to be ideal, although I didn't have quite the damage output I'd have liked I could switch to resto gear before each fight, Earth Shield myself and then switch back to enhancement gear and just beat things down with my 2h axe. I got killed a few times, firstly by letting a runner bring friends in one of the early orc caster groups, then by a spider pack and finally by the last big group of orcs before Overlord Wyrmthalak's area. The last group turned out to be more than I could handle, although I might have been able to get through using one of my elementals in the end I just used an invisibility potion to get past. I do love alchemy sometimes! This meant I had my fire elemental for use on the boss, in order to kill him before the adds overwhelmed me. The other two bosses - Highlord Omokk and War Master Voone - turned out to be straight forward, although the troll was hitting surprisingly hard.
I've tried this before on the test server using a premade rogue, and although an experienced rogue player would have done a much better job than me, and the rogue did give the ability to stealth past nearly all the trash that I had to clear with my shaman, a character with medium dps and the ability to heal was as good if not better at the role than a high dps character with crowd control. Maybe Blizzard has got this class balance thing right after all...!
A 0/20/41 spec turned out to be ideal, although I didn't have quite the damage output I'd have liked I could switch to resto gear before each fight, Earth Shield myself and then switch back to enhancement gear and just beat things down with my 2h axe. I got killed a few times, firstly by letting a runner bring friends in one of the early orc caster groups, then by a spider pack and finally by the last big group of orcs before Overlord Wyrmthalak's area. The last group turned out to be more than I could handle, although I might have been able to get through using one of my elementals in the end I just used an invisibility potion to get past. I do love alchemy sometimes! This meant I had my fire elemental for use on the boss, in order to kill him before the adds overwhelmed me. The other two bosses - Highlord Omokk and War Master Voone - turned out to be straight forward, although the troll was hitting surprisingly hard.
I've tried this before on the test server using a premade rogue, and although an experienced rogue player would have done a much better job than me, and the rogue did give the ability to stealth past nearly all the trash that I had to clear with my shaman, a character with medium dps and the ability to heal was as good if not better at the role than a high dps character with crowd control. Maybe Blizzard has got this class balance thing right after all...!
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Scarlet Monestary redux
Ironforge is officially my favourite city in the game. It just has so many nice touches. It's almost tempting me to start levelling a dwarf, but I'm resisting so far.
I've been intending to take my hunter to Sunken Temple to see what I think of the dps-and-cc role, and to see how instances feel grouped with humans and dwarfs instead of undead and blood elves. However it occurred to me to keep him at 49 for potential battleground use, rather than get him to level 50 or 51 and then get distracted. So instead I started looking for a group for SM Library with my NE druid. You can feel pretty confident when you can say "LFG, can tank or heal", and so it proved, we had a group together pretty quickly. I just need to bear in mind that you can't really do this at max level, at least not for the tricker instances.
As I should have expected, the outcome wasn't so much an idea of what grouping is like on the Alliance side as a reminder what it's like to PUG in an early instance, when people know their roles even less than a nightmare end game pugger. Fortunately we had an experienced tank (yours truely) even if on an unfamiliar class, otherwise between being unable to deal with runners or to focus fire on skull we'd have hand a pretty bad time. Or maybe I'm claiming undue credit, and we were just overpowered or lucky.
In hindsight I was lucky - I learned to tank from my mistakes in Pyrewood Village and with advice from a friend with higher level characters. I also got to run the Monestary several times with a semi-regular group that quickly came to trust one another, to the point that I was regularly invited to tank from then on. I'd learned a lot by then, and had forgotten my level 17 self who didn't want to use defensive stance because it lowers your damage output...
I've been intending to take my hunter to Sunken Temple to see what I think of the dps-and-cc role, and to see how instances feel grouped with humans and dwarfs instead of undead and blood elves. However it occurred to me to keep him at 49 for potential battleground use, rather than get him to level 50 or 51 and then get distracted. So instead I started looking for a group for SM Library with my NE druid. You can feel pretty confident when you can say "LFG, can tank or heal", and so it proved, we had a group together pretty quickly. I just need to bear in mind that you can't really do this at max level, at least not for the tricker instances.
As I should have expected, the outcome wasn't so much an idea of what grouping is like on the Alliance side as a reminder what it's like to PUG in an early instance, when people know their roles even less than a nightmare end game pugger. Fortunately we had an experienced tank (yours truely) even if on an unfamiliar class, otherwise between being unable to deal with runners or to focus fire on skull we'd have hand a pretty bad time. Or maybe I'm claiming undue credit, and we were just overpowered or lucky.
In hindsight I was lucky - I learned to tank from my mistakes in Pyrewood Village and with advice from a friend with higher level characters. I also got to run the Monestary several times with a semi-regular group that quickly came to trust one another, to the point that I was regularly invited to tank from then on. I'd learned a lot by then, and had forgotten my level 17 self who didn't want to use defensive stance because it lowers your damage output...
Sunday, 2 March 2008
Raiding TK - sorta
We're a casual guild, but after a while of our raiding getting rather too casual things were getting rather stagnant. Things have definitely picked up a bit though - after our first kill of Maulgar recently we made our first tentative steps into Tempest Keep early on Saturday.
The plan was to have a pop at Void Reaver - or Loot Reaver to his friends, as he's known for his obliging nature. However we were forewarned that his trash is pretty tough, and so it proved. We were doing pretty well to start off, but as we got closer to the VR things got tougher fairly quickly. We got as far as killing one of the four trash groups in his room before the trash started respawning, and we called it a morning.
The group really enjoyed the run - it's always great to step into a new instance for the first time. Seeing as we managed to get a full raid for a very early morning start, I'm confident that we'll be back soon, and I'm sure progress will be made. Meanwhile I've got some great screenshots, and another item has moved from my wish list to my working-on list.
The plan was to have a pop at Void Reaver - or Loot Reaver to his friends, as he's known for his obliging nature. However we were forewarned that his trash is pretty tough, and so it proved. We were doing pretty well to start off, but as we got closer to the VR things got tougher fairly quickly. We got as far as killing one of the four trash groups in his room before the trash started respawning, and we called it a morning.
The group really enjoyed the run - it's always great to step into a new instance for the first time. Seeing as we managed to get a full raid for a very early morning start, I'm confident that we'll be back soon, and I'm sure progress will be made. Meanwhile I've got some great screenshots, and another item has moved from my wish list to my working-on list.
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.
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 -
On the other hand there's something a bit sappy about the Alliance. Strength and Honour!
- 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.
- I really like the way the camera height reflects your character, so as a dwarf a Nelf is really tall.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)