Thursday 30 April 2009

Meet The New Staff

Following yet more nerfs to Ulduar, last night our 25-man raid managed to down Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002 and Kologarn, and had time left over for a couple of attempts on Assembly of Iron.  And Mingle has (for the first time) added a staff (Intensity, which was most generously dropped by Ignis) to her raiding gear.

I wonder if it doubles as a bottle opener?

It’s such an odd look, seeing her with staff in hand (or strapped to her back).  I mean, she’s only ever equipped one in order to train her weapon skill up, and that wasn’t even an afternoon’s work.  Admittedly the shadowform effect does tend to limit the effect of any new gear she gets (even new shoulder armour, which are usually one of the most noticeable pieces of gear from an aesthetic perspective), but a staff…  It’s just a whole new look for her.

It surprised me that no-one else in the raid rolled on it.  I mean, it has the most +hit for any weapon I’ve come across so far, and having so much on one item means you have a lot more flexibility when you’re readjusting your gear to get the hit you need without nerfing your other stats too much.

(As an aside, quite a lot of items have been going off-spec, so I guess that really puts the normal 25-man Ulduar gear into the correct perspective, especially when so many raiders had best-in-slot items pre-Ulduar.  If we can get our act together enough to start doing hard-mode bosses, then the loot circus will probably kick into gear.)

Mingle is currently just a little bit over the hit cap: the cap for a non-Draenei with 3 points in Misery and 3 points in Shadow Focus is 290, and Mingle has 305 without any buffs.  This is after re-gemming and fiddling with gear as best I could, so she’s stuck with those extra points for the foreseeable future.  But she did pick up almost 100 extra spellpower from it all, so the WWS for tonight could be interesting.

In other news, there’s not really any other news.  Nothing exciting from the fishing dailies, nor from the Tournament dailies, nor from…  well, you get the idea.

And speaking of dailies…

/wave

Tuesday 28 April 2009

Eggs: Spawn-Camp Or Run Circuits?

As someone who spent a couple of hours running in circles while shape-shifted into rabbit-form, picking up eggs around Azure Watch, I’ve been surprised at the number of people who’ve spent their time camping at a spawn-point for several eggs (quite a few I picked up from in front of them as I travelled past at near-supersonic speed).

I am ninja stealth bunny - fear me!

If I wanted to sit in one place and click on an egg when it spawns after however many minutes, I’d probably be missing the old 30-second duration of fishing.  Actually, even the old fishing system would be more fun than egg-camping, for me at least.  I just don’t get it. 

But I’ve completed the meta-achievement on Mingle, so I don’t have to stress over it any more (until this time next year, maybe).

Mingle’s endeavours with rod in hand have been rewarded with another fishing item, the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat.  Besides giving her a certain stereotypical-adventurer-chic, the on-use lure ability is very convenient.

In 25-man raiding news, Auriaya came to a sticky end last night (and I was dead for most of the fight, just like I was for the 10-man kill of her I was party to).  We then moved on to wipe all night on Thorim and Hodir – it…  really wasn’t pretty.

Also, I’m the guildmember responsible for logging the fights to put WWS and WMO reports on the forums for the guild after raid, but after replacing the logging addon I’d been using when 3.1 broke LoggerHead (which has been updated, finally) I forgot to enable it for Ulduar.  Thankfully another raider was able to log the fight (thanks Tame), so my poor performance wasn’t lost to the ages.

Last of all for today, I stumbled across a couple of interesting links that I thought I’d share.

Back to my dailies (and fishing), anyway.

Just call me Miss Jones.

(I’m beginning to wonder if I should rename the blog to “One Of These Fishermen”)

/wave

Monday 27 April 2009

A Noble Compulsion.

Well, Mingle finally has the Noble Gardener achievement under her belt (although I did stay up until after 3am to complete it).  I had to farm a hundred chocolates to buy the Spring Rabbit for the last achievement I required.

Done.  Next holiday event  please.

I guess that’s the compulsive side of my nature shining through.

My time spent fishing has finally gifted one of my characters (Mingle again – she’s having all the luck) with something new in the reward bag, namely a Strand Crawler.  It’s nifty and all, but I’m still hanging out for a new fishing rod.  And we still have no idea where those fancy fishing bobbers come from, or when they may become available.  Bah.

Raiding has made some more slow progress – we downed the Assembly of Iron last night, and started working on Auriaya whose cats proceeded to shred us repeatedly.  We finished the night with kills of the two Vault of Archavon bosses, which I found surprisingly frustrating due to my desire to be tanking, not just dps.  Unfortunately (for me, in this case) our GM doesn’t do alt runs unless there are very special circumstances*, which there weren’t last night.

A Maiden on a Mission!

Sad to say, I’m finding raiding on my shadow priest is unsatisfying and the desire to change is growing.  Perhaps it’s just the whole “Grass is greener” thing; I might see if I can have a word with an officer about it, anyway, so they’re aware of my dissatisfaction (even if there isn’t much that can be done about it).  I’m not sure if it’s role-burnout or just me being difficult – time will tell, I suspect.

It’s kind of disappointing that our 10-man raids have failed to come together this week – I really want to get Dingle into Ulduar, and see if I’m geared enough to progress in there.

A Little Bunny Goes A Long Way

Mingle and Dingle have both completed their second exalted champion grinds with the Tournament, and will be starting on their third today.  Their seals were invested in a Mechanopeep and a Dun Morogh Cub, which have been surreptitiously listed in the neutral auction house for ridiculous sums of gold, with a view to funding Dingle’s chopper fund.  Fingle will be on her third and final day of aspirant status, starting her Ironforge valiant training today (if I don’t get distracted).

Best served on ice?

Well, dailies await (not least of which is more fishing in Wintergrasp for the fishing daily).

/wave

* – Raiders Alts + Farmed Content = Trauma + Fail.  (If you’ve been in that position, you’ll probably sympathise)

Saturday 25 April 2009

Fishing Makes Everything Better.

Even Lake Wintergrasp yesterday, where I spent almost 100 minutes fishing in a rather contented manner.

100minutes

That’s what I caught in that time, thanks to one glow worm and four sharpened fish hooks.  And on top of that, from the clams, I scored 9 northsea pearls and a siren’s tear.  All in all, I’d call that a pretty good haul.  It was actually pretty enjoyable (other than being killed twice by horde players who obviously don’t fish); I just put on some good music (first was the self-titled album by Genesis from 1983, and after that was a collection of Crowded House tracks) and kicked back (in a manner of speaking).  All I needed was a floppy hat and a beer.

I’ve now got 5 fishing toons, having brought Pringle back into the fold (it was fun getting him to the central flight path in Sholazar Basin), and Kringle might join in the fun today if I have the time (I checked and found I’d done some fishing on both characters, so it’s not quite the grind of starting from 0).  I also scored a Porcelain Bell from Mingle’s fishing reward yesterday, which has the virtue of vendoring for 100g.  Still no fishing rods (or Sea Turtle), but there’s always tomorrow.

We didn’t have the numbers for either guild 10-man Ulduar last night – the main group didn’t get enough healers, and the secondary group just didn’t get enough sign-ups.  Disappointing.

Fingle has started doing the Tournament dailies, with an eye towards getting a replacement to the BoA mace she’s still wielding at level 80.  Kringle’s still waiting to be levelled.  And re-talented.

I’m also finding my aggregate gold total going up, thanks to multiple characters doing dailies – much more of this and I might find myself getting around to giving one of my characters dual-specs.  It might actually be interesting to do it with Fingle, and see how hard it is to gear up a second shadow-priest (mostly) from scratch, with a backup set of gear for disc.

This would be a bad time to find out it's not waterproof...

Lastly, I’ve been reading this fascinating article on WoWInsider that delves into the differences between 10-man and 25-man loot in Wrath, and why the difference may be necessary to keep 25-man raiding viable.  Have a look here if you’re interested.

(Oh, and I might finally be able to remember how to correctly use an apostrophe, thanks to this)

For now?  Addons are updated (again), so it’s time to be endailyfied.

/wave

Friday 24 April 2009

Perseverance. We Has It.

It took 15 tries, but we finally got Kologarn down last night.  (Personally, I think he died because he felt sorry for us)

I wonder if he's still covered by his warranty?

I’ve also come across some wonderful daily news – you remember how I thought the cooking and jewelcrafting dailies had been changed to require level 80?  Well, it turns out it was a bug.

The level requirement for the following quests has been appropriately set to level 65: Shipment: Wicked Sun Brooch, Infused Mushroom Meatloaf, Mustard Dogs!, and Cheese for Glowergold.

Kringle and Pringle can go back to earning their keep.  (Hurrah!)

Did anyone ever play the Bejeweled addon for WoW?  I introduced it to my guild while we were progressing through Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, and it was entertaining to get the achievement messages from the most unlikely players while we raided (and sometimes at the most unexpected moments).  Anyway, they (PopCap Games) have released a new one:  Peggle.  (I can’t wait to see my guilds response to this one)

Three more days of Tournament dailies, and both Mingle and Dingle will have their second faction raised to Champion (Stormwind for Mingle, due to her choice to only ride horses, and Gnomeregan for Dingle because an engineer will only ride a Mechanostrider – until you can joust on a chopper).  Incidentally, I’m getting quite good at the mounted combat now – defeating the four champions is almost a one-shot thing.  I’m also able to down the Boneguard Commander for Battle Before The Citadel single-handedly (provided I don’t pick up any scouts when I pull, or while I kite him).

Hopefully I’ll find out if we’re running a second Ulduar 10-man group tonight – signups for it haven’t been very comforting so far, so it’s still up in the air.  On a related note, I took Dingle in for 10-man Vault of Archavon last night, and we managed to one-shot Emalon this time – my performance was a lot better, apart from some hiccups taunting the replacement adds off a paladin who picked them up to kite towards me after we downed each charged one.  No T8 for me, although I did pick up the PvP chest from Archavon (which I can’t see myself using, to be honest).

For now though, ‘tis time to get a-dailying!

/wave

Thursday 23 April 2009

Yawn. No, Really.

I couldn’t get back to sleep (woke up at about 6am, after going to bed at 2am), so I figured I might as well get some dailies out of the way.  And guess what?  The fourth day of Blood Is Thicker in a row.

Just call me the Red Baron.

Ah well, you get that sometimes.  (But it would be nice to get something else for a change – I’ve done the dailies every day since 3.1 went live, and I’ve still only seen two of them)  I’ve started leveling fishing on Fingle as well, which gives me four characters to fish with.  Fortunately you’re able to do the fishing daily in Shattrath in addition to the Dalaran one, so I can keep myself in Sharpened Fish Hooks.

Ulduar-25 went better last night; after defeating the loot piñata that is Flame Leviathan (well, we downed him despite all the raiders who still don’t know how to do that fight – apparently we’re going to be organised when we do it next week), we then downed Razorscale (eventually – it took a few attempts), and I sat out for XT-002 Deconstructor.  We finished with Ignis (barely downing him before we over-ran our scheduled raid times).  Razorscale was generous, and gave me the Collar of the Wyrmhunter, which has allowed me to drop Haunting Call in favour of The Impossible Dream – the new +hit pieces are making it a lot easier to juggle that particular stat.  (The stats on it are nice, but some of these helms make me really glad I can set them to not display on my characters)

I’m hoping to get Dingle into the second guild 10-man group for Ulduar this week, but her comparative lack of gear may put her out of the running – Ulduar is really quite demanding of raiders, in that they need to be pretty solidly geared before it’s worth taking them in.  While she’s geared enough for Naxx25, Ulduar10 may be beyond her – or at least, her lack of gear may make her impossible to keep up.  I’ll have to see what happens come Friday.

For now, though, I’m going to finish the fishing dailies and see if I can get another couple of hours sleep – raiding and sleep deprivation aren’t a very successful combination.

/wave

Wednesday 22 April 2009

Nothing To See Here. Move Along.

Just a little post today.  It could be because I’m feeling lazy, but if pressed on the matter I’ll deny it.

Yay for incidental achievements!

We went back to 10-man Ulduar last night before server shutdown, and managed to down Ignis (who has apparently been nerfed substantially – I hadn’t been in the attempt earlier in the week, so I missed the ‘fun’).  No loot-love for Mingle from the boss, but she scored the Drape of the Spellweaver off the pre-Ignis trash that not only was an upgrade, but also gave her the Epic achievement.

I’ve been distracted of late (and the Tournament dailies are taking forever), so Kringle has been getting impatient for that leveling I promised him.  Had the single fishing daily for three days in a row now, and nothing shiny to show for it (apart from the compass of uselessness and a couple of glow worms).

We have another week of Ulduar to look forward to (possibly getting past Mimiron in 10-man now he’s been tuned down a little, and hopefully getting further in 25-man with less hassle), and I guess I have more days of the Tournament for Mingle and Dingle (which I’m getting tired of, especially with them being such travel-heavy time-sinks with very drawn-out payoffs)

For now, though?  Dailies, again.

/wave

Tuesday 21 April 2009

Quick Argent Tournament Information And Linkage.

Just a quick post that I’ve been meaning to make for a few days (and kept forgetting).  If you’re having trouble with the mounted combat part of the Tournament, I found this post to be a lifesaver.

I can has squire?

Here’s my take on it (having finally reached champion):

  • Before you start, make sure you have 3 stacks up of your shield.
  • Talk to your opponent to start the fight, use Shield Breaker (attack #2) when he moves into the centre of the right, and immediately follow so he remains in melee range (which means you don’t get charged).
  • Move just far enough away from him to use Shield Breaker again, then back into melee range before he can return the favour.  Repeat until his shields are down.
  • Move away until you can charge him (attack #3), then return to melee range.  Repeat until he’s been defeated.
  • While you’re doing this you have to keep your shields up (attack #4).
  • And while you’re doing all that, you have to keep him in melee range when he moves away in preparation for a charge.

Easy, right?  Well, practice makes perfect…  (I certainly got more than my share of practice)

Once you reach Champion rank and start doing those dailies, the optional rewards are quite nice as well.  You get the choice of a Champion’s Writ or a Champion’s Purse, in addition to the Champion’s Seal.  The Writ can be turned in for tokens worth 250 reputation with your faction of choice, and the Purse gave me 10g for each of the three dailies I completed.

Well, that’s Mingle done for the day, time to get Dingle enchampioned.

/wave (again)

Time Flies When You’re Having Wipes

Well, after our first week raiding Ulduar, we’ve managed to down Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, and last night we (finally) got down XT-002 Deconstructor.  The night was finished off with Emalon in 25-man Vault of Archavon, to give some people a piece of T8.5.  In 10-man progression we also managed to kill Flame Leviathan, Razorscale, XT-002, Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, Auriaya, Freya, Thorim and Hodir.  A pretty full-on week for everyone involved.

A picture is worth 1/3 of the week's progression.

Oh, and we might not have a screenshot of our XT-002 kill, due to an over-zealous engineer mining his body.  Whoops.

I have to say, the adjustment in 25-mans from Naxx to Ulduar is proving pretty painful.  This is especially evident after spending time in Ulduar in both 10-man and 25-man, as demonstrated by the differing progressions listed above.  I’m really hoping we get it together for 25-man a bit more when we start again next week, but I’m a bit ambivalent about it for now.

On a more positive note, today should be the day that Mingle and Dingle become my first champions of the Tournament, which means acquiring squires and starting to collect the Champion badges for fun and profit.  Well, for profit anyway.  (The pets are BoE, and I suspect the AH will be a popular destination for them)

But it’s time to get dailying, and Kringle won’t level himself (unfortunately).

/wave

Sunday 19 April 2009

As Busy As A Dog With Fleas

Between the sudden need to level Kringle and Pringle (Kringle due to cooking dailies requiring lvl80, and Pringle due to cooking dailies and jewelcrafting dailies requiring lvl80), the travel-intensive Tournament (and frequently, fishing) dailies, and the on-going guild exploratory mission into 10-man Ulduar, I’m finding myself with no shortage of things to do in-game.

Turtle in a whole shell?

The addition of a level requirement to the jewelcrafting feels like Blizzard is just keeping it up with the cooking daily change, but it’s pretty effective motivation to keep leveling.

I took Kringle and his shiny new turtletank out for a spin, and was invited to participate in a guild Drak’Tharon Keep alt run – apart from when I accidentally pulled the first group of mobs with my pet (can’t beat a start like that) it went surprisingly smoothly, and Kringle picked up his first gear upgrade, the Helmet of Living Flesh, to replace his T4 helm.  I really need to get used to switching in and out of Aspect of the Viper, though – I’m finding an embarrassing tendency to switch into Viper and forget to switch back.  (Note to self: have a look on WoWInterface)

Both Mingle and Dingle have reached the rank of Valiant in the Tournament, and Ringle completed the first day.  The quests themselves aren’t that bad, but the travel time is a bit annoying and adds up pretty quickly if you have multiple characters trying to work through the dailies.  (Additional travel for the fishing daily doesn’t help)

Mingle also went back into Ulduar for the guild 10-man run, after missing out last night.  When I joined, they had managed to down both Razorscale and the XT-002 Deconstructor.  By the time we called it a night, we’d taken down Kologarn, the Assembly of Iron, Auriaya, Hodir, Thorim and Freya.  Only Ignis (who’s apparently still bugged), General Vezax and Yogg-Saron remain.

The best way to sum it my experience is that you have to plan the trash, and the bosses aren’t friendly towards errors in execution.  Personally, I think Auriaya was the hardest, due to the tricky nature of the pull when you engage her.  Freya and her adds of doom were pretty unpleasant as well (and I failed miserably, dying from pulling aggro on one of the adds, leaving the group to successfully 9-man her down, ressing me as a ghoul a little before she died).

Nobody nose the troubles I've seen...

Kologarn was kind of fun, provided you were able to run out from the eye-beams without dying or kiting it over someone else.  The Assembly of Iron was entertaining – stand on the blue stuff on the ground unless it’s covered by green stuff on the ground and watch for when you have to run away.  We also picked up the I Choose You, Stormcaller Brundir achievement – two more to go, for having each of the other bosses killed last.

The trash before Auriaya was pretty brutal – they come in pairs which you have to keep to tank separately, and occasionally one will fire a slow-moving spark to the other which has to be killed before it reaches the other mob to prevent it from giving the mob a tank-killing buff.  Then, after one is dead, the other receives a powerful buff which means you’d better kill it before it flattens the tank.

Auriaya herself isn’t that hard, but her cat adds are rather unpleasant – when they’re together they gain something like 100% extra damage.  They didn’t one-shot the tank, but the tank didn’t last more than a second.  After several mishaps, we sorted out the pull and managed to get her down, gaining The Antechamber of Ulduar.

Next up were the four keepers (who I guess are now the one keeper, Mimiron being the only one remaining).  Thorim was first, and turned out to be a two-group fight.  The first group of players remains in the arena below Thorim (which is where I was), and fights waves of adds until the second group is able to fight through to Thorim and engage him.  Once engaged, he leaped down into the arena (followed by the second group) and it became a simple tank-and-spank.  Simple, but quite satisfying.  I’ll Take You All On was picked up upon completion.

Hodir was next, and was a tricky combination of Keristrasza from The Nexus and Sapphiron from Naxxramas.  You have to keep moving (or finding safe areas to stand) to prevent yourself from being frozen to the floor, and patches on the floor where icicles fall from the ceiling, and find safe places to stand when he casts Flash Freeze.  I failed on this one frequently and comprehensively, but the rest of the group managed to do pretty well.  (I accidentally picked up Staying Buffed All Winter during one attempt, while we were at it)

Even the memory makes my poor, bruised spleen hurt.

Freya was the last of the night, and it was pretty rough.  We cleared the trash from the area (which was especially exciting with the groups of lashers), then took down the three elders (the hard mode is where you leave one or more elder up for when you engage Freya, much like Sartharion).

When you start, Freya has 150 stacks of a healing buff which can only be removed by killed the various waves of adds she summons.  The adds I really hated (and frequently were killed by) were the trio of the Storm Lasher, Ancient Water Elemental and Snaplasher; these three have to be killed at about the same time, otherwise they resurrect and pwnage ensues.

We had a quick look at the trash before Mimiron, but decided to call it after we were mercilessly crushed by it.  And that was about 9 hours of raiding completed.  I didn’t pick up any loot, just a bunch of fairly useless Emblems of Valor – the few caster items that dropped weren’t upgrades for my majority of best-in-slot 25-man items.

I’ve got some fishing to do today, as I’m down from 87 to 20 fish feasts from all these attempts.  Hopefully I’ll get an invite to the raid this afternoon, but if not we’re back to the 25-man version tonight (and again tomorrow night).  I’m thinking of respeccing as well, and dropping the points I used to pick up Silence for the Razorscale trash; Shadow Affinity might keep me alive a little bit longer…  (I’m thinking of something like this)

But on the subject of things to do, these dailies won’t wait forever!

/wave

Friday 17 April 2009

No raid tonight? What to do?

So far I’m enjoying 3.1.  Ulduar is great, fishing is fun, new dailies are something different to do.  They’ve even added a direct flight route from Dalaran to Sholazar Basin.

No, I can't see my house from here.

I’ve had a play with the new boss in the 10-man Vault of Archavon on Dingle, and I’m sure it’s more fun to dps than it was to tank - I was designated add-tank, and it really was a tough fight for me; keeping aggro on the mobs I had was easy, but a very restricted camera angle made targeting respawned adds something of a challenge.  But we did manage to down the boss, and one of the druid’s in the group became the first in the guild to pick up a piece of T8.

We had another bash at Razorscale last night, and between the hotfixes (increasing the enrage timer to 10 minutes, and making the iron dwarf casters only do their chain lightning when stationary) and our increasing competence, we managed to get the boss down to 9% on our best attempt.  Admittedly we were caught off-guard by the enrage several times, as it’s not in the Deadly Boss Mods timers just yet, but it’s nice to be able to consistently get that far.

Out of curiosity I decided to put the fishing changes to the test, and picked up the fishing daily on Dingle, who was a fishing virgin at the time (with 0 points of fishing skill).  It took about 50 minutes (not including travel time back to Dalaran to train), but she caught the Ghostfish and had leveled to 142 fishing in the process.

The changes to the tailoring mount, the flying carpet, have made it as useful as a traditional mount now (they’ve removed the mount and dismount animations), so it’s been set as Mingle’s default mount – I’ve been waiting for this change, as I loved the look of it but the delay in mounting/dismounting grew very annoying, very quickly.  On a related note, if I can ever save up enough I’d love to get the Chopper for Dingle – what better mount for an engineer, after all?

One change that has disappointed me is that the Dalaran cooking dailies are now only available for level 80 characters; bankrogue Pringle and hunter Kringle will have to finish leveling before they can continue doing them.  (Curiously enough, the jewelcrafting dailies are still available for Pringle, who’s only level 75)

So I guess it’s time to put a little effort into leveling those two – I’ve respecced Kringle (beastmaster again, my favourite spec), and replaced his pet gorilladin with a turtle (now that Thunderstomp, which made the gorilla so useful, has been made available to all Tenacity pets).  I’ll fire up Jame’s Leveling Guide later and see how we do – Kringle is level 74, and is about half-way through Howling Fjord so far.

It wasn't as busy outside Ulduar as it was on patch day, but there were still a few people there.

No more raids until Sunday, so I’ve plenty of time to play with my alts.  Should gain access to the next tier of Tournament quests with Dingle and Mingle today as well, so I’m getting closer to the shiny new mounts.  For now, though?  ‘Tis dailies time!

/wave

Thursday 16 April 2009

Ulduar Hurts

The guild eventually managed to get some time in Ulduar (after the 6-hour delay to the servers coming back up this morning), and Mingle has been in for a little play in both the 10-man and 25-man versions.

We got pounded into the ground.  Repeatedly.  Just like the good old days of Burning Crusade progression raiding.

Moments like this, I wish Mingle was an engineer.

We only managed to try two bosses (and the trash to two more) in 10-man, and three bosses in 25-man.  I think we’re going to have to up our game substantially before we’ll get much further.

First up this afternoon in 10-man was the Flame Leviathan.  Now, I was quite concerned that this might end up being a disaster right up there with Oculus, but they pulled a hat out of a rabbit with this one.  I was given a turret on one of the siege engines and had a blast, well, blasting things.  It was pretty entertaining.

After a false start where we failed to take down the towers (and were trounced by Leviathan, adds and bombardment by orbital lasers), we cleared the towers and then took the Leviathan down, picking up a couple of level-219 items along with an Emblem of Valor.

first10manloot

The neck was of no interest to me, and after checking the stats on the cloth head, I passed on that as well (it being lower in stats than Mingle’s Helm of Rationality).  We followed that with a few attempts on Razorscale (which ended in mass cases of various death-by-fire), and tried to visit XT-002 Deconstructor but were thwarted by a couple of packs of rather nasty mechanical adds. Before calling it for the afternoon we tried pulling the two giant elementals outside Ignis’s room, but they very quickly pounded us into a fine paste.

Cue end of raid, for us to take a break and lick our wounds (which were mostly psychological, but still fairly debilitating).

This evening lead to the 25-man raid team entering Ulduar for the first time.  After some quick directions about the vehicles, we romped through the pre-Leviathan trash (making sure to kill the towers this time) and one-shot the Leviathan.  Admittedly, we did kind of fail miserably at getting the turrets on Leviathan down (I think we’ll need to organise that a bit better next time round), but that did lead to us completing our first heroic achievement, closely followed by a second achievement for looting our first Emblems of Conquest.

firstulduarachievement_sm

Things didn’t go that well afterwards as we found ourselves failing to perform against Razorscale, and a visit to the XT-002 Deconstructor (who was oddly trash-free in 25-man) proved equally fatal (although far more amusing – the voice for the boss was quite unexpected).

The server was taken down for emergency maintenance a couple of minutes after that, so the raid was called and everyone has limped away to recover.  Still, we have our first heroic Ulduar loot, so I guess we can call this round a draw.

first25manloot

Sadly I didn’t get the caster ring (which was slightly worse than the ring from Kel’Thuzad, but still better than the two Mingle is wearing), but at least it went to a good home.

And I’ve managed to finish my first one of the new fishing dailies on Mingle, and one round of the Tournament dailies on both Mingle and Dingle, so I guess it’s been a productive day all round.  Exhausting, but productive.

And speaking of exhausting…

/wave

Tuesday 14 April 2009

Yay, 3.1!

Looks like tomorrow will be an interesting day. We’re going to do an exploratory guild 10-man Ulduar in the morning to get some practice before we do our 25-man in the evening, and Mingle will be going in to lend a hand with shadow pew-pew. (I’ll see if I can take some screenshots of the carnage to post between raids)

And as part of the preparation for tomorrow, I did some fishing to have a supply of Fish Feasts on hand. I did a lot of fishing over the last couple of days (and one of the officers gave me a couple of stacks of each of the fish ingredients), something that I really wish I could have left it until post-patch (mostly to get more chances at fishing up the Sea Turtle, as seen with the other new mounts on MMO Champion). I made 62 fish feasts, which gives me about 89 – hopefully that’ll last the week. (And Mingle dinged 450 fishing this evening in Sholazar Basin)

But here comes 3.1! Yay! A new raid and better fishing ahoy!

I R Fisherman!

Farming Rep Used To Take Longer

Yet another Dingle achievement post; I’m sure you’re surprised.

exaltedsporeggar_sm

I’ve been doing a little farming of reputations, with an eye to completing The Diplomat achievement – I think “Dinglemouse the Diplomat” has a nice ring to it, don’t you? 

As I mentioned previously, farming Kurenai to exalted took a couple of sessions of grinding, but otherwise wasn’t too rough.  Farming Sporeggar, however, had me scratching my head for a little while.  The two methods that I was used to (farming Fertile Spores or farming Bloodscale Naga) aren’t the quickest of things.  The breakthrough came while I browsed the WoWWiki page about the faction, and made a little mental adjustment that made it easy.

The adjustment is, “I’m playing a well geared tank – how hard can normal Underbog be to farm?”  As it turns out, it’s not hard at all.  I mean, it’s seriously easy.  (And kind of fun, to boot)  You see, as someone who previously raided on a rogue (which is to say, is used to being squishy) and currently raids on a priest (which is to say, is squishy), I’m more used to avoiding the kind of stand-up fights where a tank really shines – hopefully next time it won’t take me as long to come to my senses, and play the strength of the class.

On my first time through I cautiously cleared my way through to several of the groups of humanoids after Hungarfen, and stopped there to head back out to reset – it wasn’t necessary to finish the instance, as all I needed were around a couple of hundred Sanguine Hibiscus, after all, and they’re easily farmed in the area up to the first Naga pair.  (It’s quite possible I could have cleared the instance, but the humanoid section in the middle would have been an unnecessary time-sink)

I think I was getting around 30 hibiscus per run, and a bit of vendor trash (plus a couple of greens, and a blue from Hungarfen each time), and I was taking it very leisurely (about 20-30 minutes per run – I’m not really one to rush things when I don’t need to); after six runs (and a clearing my bags once) I was able to head back the Sporeggar and ding exalted.

Last on the list is Timbermaw Hold, and I’m relying (once again) upon advice from WoWWiki.  This is another old-school grind, and pretty slow going (especially when someone else is farming the mobs as well), but I’m making progress.  (If you’re planning on farming this one yourself, the WoWWiki guide is a must-read)

Gear also continued to drop – some helpful guildies went to normal Halls of Lightning with me, and I was blessed with the Seal of the Pantheon on my very first run, much to my chagrin.  (One of the others in the raid had to make several runs on his tank in order to pick it up)

So *that's* where it is!

A little exploring also saw the Explore Northrend achievement completed (with the new tabard to go with it, which took Dingle to ten), and the Explore Outland achievement fell not long afterwards.

Sunday saw the guild finishing clearing most of the Wrath content for the week (Kel’Thuzad and Malygos were saved for Monday night), and venturing back into Outland for something to do.  Dingle tagged along as Vashj fell first in SSC, followed by Kael in Tempest Keep, and we finished the night with Illidan in Black Temple.  (I kind of miss the fact that they used to be hard – and in the case of the Vashj fight, lots of fun!)

For now, though, the desire for something new to do is becoming uncomfortable in it’s intensity – the lack of level-80 content has become glaringly obvious and many of my guildmates have expressed sentiments similar to my own, in that Blizzard had better not disappoint with Ulduar.

My gold’s on 3.1 going live tomorrow.  Probably because I don’t want to be re-running the same old raids for yet another blasted week.

Time for dailies!

/wave

Saturday 11 April 2009

Busy, Busy Busy.

I had a pretty full-on afternoon (and evening) last night, and somehow managed to finish Naxxramas, Vault of Archavon and Malygos 10-man raids with Dingle.

Triumph!

Now, for an alt I think that’s pretty good. (At least, it is for my alts, the rest of whom aren’t getting out of Dalaran much) And the group worked pretty well, with quite a few one-shot bosses (including Gothik, who crushed last week’s group). I got to experience the terror of tanking both Kel’Thuzad and Malygos, but our DK tank had the death-of-boredom that is tanking Loatheb all to himself.

Tanking Sapphiron wasn’t that hard (having Dingle defence-capped in her frost-resist gear helped, I suspect), but KT was something of a challenge – originally the DK was tanking KT, but after a couple of wipes I inherited the position and he tanked the adds. It was tricky to fit both HS spam and frost bolt interrupts into the routine, and to move out of the things that appeared on the floor underneath me (at least, to get out of them without moving the boss too much – rotating around the boss slowly seemed to work) but I pulled it off (somehow).

Malygos was something of a shock to the system – in all my (short) time tanking, that’s the first time I’ve been seen my health dropping so drastically, so often and so quickly (no, Gluth doesn’t count). And I have a new respect for our 25-man Main Tank/Raid Leader, for being able to tank and watch for sparks and raid lead.

What I’ve learned from all this is that my tanking, while not as bad as some of the green-clad newly-80 DKs lurking in trade channel, still needs work. I was often rage-capped, and kept letting both my Sunder Armor stacks and battle shouts drop (when I remembered to put a shout up at all).

Fitting Heroic Strike spam into my rotation is tricky, and I’m definitely needing practice getting it all together a bit better. I also need to do a bit more research into the various battle shouts, to get a better idea of which to put up and when to do so. I will probably also have to put together more warnings in Power Auras to help keep track of whether a shout is up or not, although I should probably have a look to see if there are other ways to track them. (I’ll be sure to post my findings on here – if I don’t get sidetracked by new shiny toys and other distractions)

I have an empty ring in Opie that could be very useful for putting up short-duration buffs like battleshouts, but I think this is something I might have to get some advice with – I might see if I can have a word with our Guild Leader (who’s a very skillful prot warrior) and get some tips.

And the run didn’t leave me empty-handed – Dingle has finally picked up some T7, in the shape of shoulders and chest tokens, and Malygos blessed her with a shiny new shield.

Well, dailies are waiting for my participation, so I must get to it. But here’s an image of the fruits of yesterday’s labours.

I R Tank!

/wave

Friday 10 April 2009

Perception of Class Imbalance and Social Status: Another Perspective on PvE vs. PvP

I was reading a blue post about class balance, and I realised something: There’s not only two games in WoW (the larger social game of Player vs. Mobs and the smaller, tribal game of Player vs. Player), there’s also two very different mindsets applied to each one.

(A little disclaimer before I start: This isn’t really an opinion piece, more a stream-of-(un?)conciousness, so don’t read too much into it. I’m just trying to get a handle on the differences between how the two games not only affect the game, but also how they affect the players.)

tldr
(Beware incoming wall of text – You’ve been warned!)

In PvE, it’s all about a group of players (5, 10 or 25) trying to kill a group of mobs. Each class and talent build has it’s own strengths and weakness, but it comes down to damage done for dps, healing done for healers, and survivability for tanks. Any cries of imbalance are (usually) around imbalance of a class or spec compared to other classes or specs of the same role.

I’d argue that apart from situations where a spec is wildly overpowered (Ret paladin dps immediately after 3.0, for example, or Fury warrior dps currently), differences are more down to play style and player skill. While there are always calls on the forums to buff class/spec X and nerf Y, I believe it’s mostly jockeying for social position, in a manner of speaking – PvE is all about ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them,’ with ‘Them’ in this case being Blizzard as represented by their various NPCs. Buffing your class means you have a better chance to help defeat ‘Them.’

While you may frequently be beaten on the meters by other players, the fact that everyone is working towards the singular goal of Defeat ‘Them’ is by its’ nature inclusive. Certainly, conflict sometimes arises within the group where certain classes are perceived to be underperforming, but this can be due as much to player skill as an under-tuned class or spec, or even unavoidable factors such as a player’s internet connection or computer.

But at the end, everything still comes down to the group combining forces to overcome the challenge set before them in the raid. The cries of nerf/buff are groups trying to ensure that they aren’t being marginalised by other cliques (classes or specs) who would end up replacing their positions in their raid.

However, this effect is really currently seen only at the very highest level of play, especially in the current Wrath endgame where the substantially lower level of difficulty (compared to Sunwell pre-3.0, for example) means that the idea of “Bring the Player, Not the Class” has been able to gain significant traction.

So PvE is about your position in the raid. PvP, however, is where it gets personal.

With PvE, it’s really a game where everyone participating wins (we kill the boss) or everyone loses (the boss kills us). PvP, however, is a game where half the participants will lose, every time. It’s hard to be objective about that, especially if you’re on the losing side a lot.

I think of PvP as being a very tribal sport, as it’s usually based around a core group of 2, 3 or 5 players. (I’m thinking of arena and WSG here; other battlegrounds are far more organic, and while they have a larger population as a whole, successful play usually still comes down to groups forming and reforming during the duration of the game in order to achieve goals – defend a location, assault a location, retrieve the flag and defend the carrier, for example)

PvP is also about ‘Us’ vs. ‘Them,’ but in this case ‘Us’ is a much smaller group, and ‘Them’ is everyone you’re competing with (which is often everyone else in the battlegroup).

Cries of ‘Nerf DKs’ (for example) usually come from players who are directly affected by the comparative power of the class, as opposed to the indirect competition in PvE content. A dps-class whose raid position is replaced by a DK, for example, can simply raid with another group in order to experience progression. In PvP, however, that same warlock may be effectively removed from play by the disparity – the level of player skill and gear required to compensate for a large difference in class/spec ability can be considerable, and difficult to achieve.

So I’d suggest that PvP class imbalances are perceived by players (possibly quite accurately) as something that directly affects their play experience, and their characters’ ability to progress in PvP.

PvE imbalances, by comparison, are perceived more as influences that can undermine your position within the raid, possibly leading to the player needing to change their social group (raid outside the guild, or even change guilds) in order to progress in PvE.

Now I’m not drawing any conclusions with this, nor do I make any claims of accuracy or insight (or even of relevance); I’m just trying to come up with a mental framework for myself to place the two game-types in.

I wonder how other people perceive the two?

Tuesday 7 April 2009

A Sword, A Sword, My Kingdom For A Sword

For all the hiccups and stresses, no-notice bails, and AFKs without warning, sometimes a pug will deliver.  Such as, a sword!

redswordinaction

And now, the Wrath version of The Sun Eater, namely the Red Sword of Courage, dropped in heroic Utgarde Pinnacle.  And it was most definitely a pug, complete with a shaman who bailed after we killed Skadi the Ruthless (possibly leaving because the drake didn’t drop), and a death knight who went afk while we were waiting for a replacement mage.  (The DK got back just in time to help kill King Ymiron, and was able to pick up his emblem with the rest of us)

But with my shiny new sword, I’m that one step closer to being fully epic-geared (and Ulduar-viable).  And all this is thanks to some useful guides to prot warrior gear (and another guide to consumables, which has proven invaluable)

First of all, TankSpot is a very useful site, and was one of the first to be bookmarked when I rolled my warrior.  TankingTips was not far behind, also very useful.  Anyway, these guides have been indispensible gearing Dingle up:

I’ve also found the Tank Consumables post from Tank Like A Girl to be very helpful, while I get a grasp on what’s effective and what isn’t.  Now I just need to get some more raid experience – 3.1 is getting closer, as is 10-man Ulduar.

/wave

Monday 6 April 2009

Sometimes Your Best Just Isn’t Good Enough

Dingle has had another venture into the depths of Naxx-10, along with experiences with the Vault of Archavon in both 10- and 25-man flavours and the Obsidian Sanctum in 10-man.  While both VoA and OS turned out fairly well, the Naxx run clearly demonstrated that when your group is undergeared it can be a rather unforgiving.

50 Emblems, Hurrah!

The first part of the Naxx run, on Saturday night, wasn’t too bad – at least, not until we got stopped cold trying to down Grobbulus.  After 6 attempts where we had multiple problems with poison clouds being dropped in the middle of the raid, and some bad timing a couple of attempts with Dingle getting the injection debuff while attempting to pick up and tank the slime adds, we called it a night.  (We did manage to clear the Spider and Plague wings, and downed Patchwerk, so it wasn’t too bad.  Plus I managed to get the 50 Emblems achievement)

Last night we went back with a few less pug members and a few more guildmate alts, and apart from managing to get Razuvious down, failed miserably on the only two other bosses we could attempt after him.  We didn’t have anywhere near enough dps for Gothik (I was tanking the live side, and on our best attempt we only just managed to get down the last adds right before he spawned – the dead side didn’t do as well) or Grobbulus (I switched from tanking the slimes to tanking the boss, and it was an… interesting learning experience). Still, 60G in repairs isn’t that bad for a single emblem, is it?  Right?

However, Dingle needs many more emblems (and yet more loot) to finish gearing up before Ulduar, so I suspect I’ll have to brave the world of pugs again, regardless of whether I’m looking forward to it or not.

Perhaps I’ll get lucky, and get in with some groups who’re capable, competent, and well-geared.  Failing that, I guess I’ll find out if there’s any truth to the saying that suffering builds character - if I have a really well-built character by the time 3.1 goes live, this will be why.

/wave

Friday 3 April 2009

Passing Time With Achievements

With time dragging between raids on my main, I’ve been working on a couple of achievements on Dingle.  For all the uselessness of achievements (which is to say, the only thing you get for completing an achievement is a completed achievement), they do provide a very convenient series of goals one can complete.

Ding, Master of Arms

First was completing Ambassador of the Alliance by completing the rep grind with Exodar and Gnomeregan Exiles.  I’ve found that the easiest way in which to do this is simply by going back and completing all the starting zone quests; in this case, I went back and completed the Exodar ones, and dinged exalted with both factions before the zone was cleared.  (It helps that any reputation gain with a single alliance faction also gives an additional 25% of the reputation gained to all of the four other factions – for example, 1000 Exodar reputation gained awards an extra 250 reputation with Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus and Gnomeregan Exiles)

I also completed Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? and Master of Arms by grinding the captive and exhausted vrykul (and farming more Relics of Ulduar for whichever alt on whom I’m next going to be grinding towards exalted with Sons of Hodir).  I have to admit, it took surprisingly longer than the same grind did on Mingle – caster melee is so much lower in damage that grinding on lower level mobs is much more effective.  With Mingle, I was able combine weapon skill leveling along with reputation grinding, and leveled her Mace, Dagger and Unarmed skills to 400 while (once again) completing the Exodar starting zone quests.

With the much higher melee dps that Dingle was putting out, I was doing so much damage (despite using very low level, low damage weapons, which is a big help when leveling weapon skills) that the low level mobs just died too fast.  When I took her back to Stormpeaks, the Vrykul mobs had enough health that I was getting more than one hit per mob, which made the process more useful.  (Just pay attention to the durability of your weapons, and don’t end up grinding uselessly for an hour before you notice that your weapon was red.  Much like my face, upon realising how much time I’d wasted with that oversight.)

I also came across another useful blog recently, this time about UIs and addons.  You’d be well advised to check out No Stock UI.  It’s where I was told about Multishot, which is responsible for the shiny achievement image linked in this post.  I suspect I’m going to be drowning in screenshots in future, but I’ll just have to grin and bear it.

Well, time to publish this post, and get onto today’s dailies.

/wave