Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Mount Hyjal: Rage Winterchill

I'm a bit behind in my posts because I keep forgetting to bring my screen shot in to work. What a flimsy excuse, huh? So since I came to this realization this morning, I figured I should write about our first night in Mount Hyjal on Monday evening. And come to think of it, my screen shot really isn't that exciting, just me using Arcane Explosion around a mass of bodies during about the 8th wave of trash before Rage Winterchill.

For those that don't know, Mount Hyjal can be a very fast instance. Before each of the first four bosses, there are 8 waves of trash that spawn about every 2 minutes. So, in 26 minutes (16 for the trash and roughly 10 for the boss), you can have a boss dead. And if you were to one shot bosses, that's about 2 hours for 4/5 of the bosses. Not too shabby.

Being our first time in there, we, of course, didn't expect to clear the whole instance. In fact, we were planning on killing the first two bosses and that's it. That said, we killed Rage Winterchill in one shot, but didn't quite get Anetheron down. Our Aoe'ing for the trash mobs was suffecient to clear the trash with enough time to eat/drink back to full before the next pull.

The biggest thing about Winterchill is that everyone needs to pay close attention to his Icebolt ability. Mages can Blink or Iceblock out of it, and Pallies can bubble out, but everyone else needs the pvp trinkets equipped so they can get out of the DoT that occurs after the initial impact. The other thing is an ability called Death and Decay. (Which looks like the picture I stole from Wowhead.)

Let me make stop here to explain a little bit about my Hot Key setup. Since I starte playing Wow many years ago, I've always had my less used spells right above my Hot Keyed ones. So, for example, all of my Aoe spells (except for Cone of Cold for some reason) were just above, because I didn't use them as much. A couple nights back I realized that I'm using Arcane Explosion more and more, and that since moving to Arcane Spec, I really hadn't taken the time to properly configure the Hot Keys optimally. Furthermore, I have some silly things like my push to talk is the ` key, while my "oh crap" hot key of Ice Block is the 1 key. I can't tell you how many times I've been talking on Vent and accidently Ice Blocked.

So, Monday night before the raid, I decided to reconfigure my keys. Scorch and Fireball - Out. Arcane Explosion and other often used keys - In. At the time, I thought it might not be a good idea to do this right before a new content raid; in hind sight, it was a terrible idea. Long story short, pretty early on I got hit with an Icebolt. No problem, I'll just blink. Oh crap, that's Icy Veins. Then there was a small blurr where I was flustered, and then I think I even tried to hit other spells... none of which were Blink or Ice Block. And then I was dead. I think there was also a grunt over Vent, that I got made fun of later. I felt like such a noob, that I didn't even suggest Battle Rezzing me. I was dead. I deserved it.

After awhile, the officer running the raid asked for a Battle Rez on me. "Okay," I thought to myself, "I can do this, no problem." Lucky for me, I didn't get hit with another Icebolt, so that wasn't a problem.

Another side note here: There was a really cool article on WowInsider on a macro that I use to boost all of the graphics. It makes the flora and fauna look spectacular. It also increases the distance you can see. Most systems bought in the past year, can probably support most (if not all) of these graphics. They really do look great.

The issue is that because of all of these plants, I couldn't see the Death and Decay on the ground. So... you guessed it, I died again. But we killed Rage, so it wasn't a big deal.

Our attempts on Anetheron were mostly choppy due to the unfamiliarity with the fight. We got through the waves of trash alright. But on our 3rd attempt through the waves, we were having a bit of trouble. And then... my Internet connection went out. And it didn't return until the morning.

So, we killed Rage. That's the good news. And I'll have about a week to get used to my buttons. That's good as well. Everything besides that... well... you already read it; no need to restate.

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