Heroic Zul'Aman - First Impressions

I'll admit that I found it a bit ironic. My first post in about 5 months is a parody of the patch notes, pretty much railing on the fact that not everyone can get the Call to Arms special loot; and my first time pugging one of the instances last night, there's a Call to Arms for Healers, so I took it.

I got in a group that had already killed the first 2 bosses. It was 4 people from another guild. They obviously hadn't run ZA back in the day. When I first zoned in, they were positioning to attack Jan'alai from the North side. Here's a hint: he's only approachable from the South, where you have to deal with some annoying trash such as Amani'shi Scouts who run towards drums and pull in a bunch of adds if you don't kill them right away. Don't get me wrong... they're not hard and you can practically 2-shot them, they're just annoying.

At any rate, we killed Jan'alai and Halazzi. We took a few shots at Hez Lord Malacross (which I always remember being difficult), but the guys got tired, and we called the group.

But healing is once again tough. With gear on both tanks and and healers, heroics on my main had gotten pretty easy. Guild groups could sail through heroics like back in the old days. ZA (and I assume ZG) are just a bit tougher. And because we've breezed through them for years now, it's almost as if you're running Deadmines with a group of level 17's... you actually have to pay attention to mechanics again... and well... it's a struggle to remember exactly what they are.

So, I suspect there will be Call to Arms for healers for just a bit until the average ilvl gear moves up enough where tanks are the only ones that need their gear. Then we'll go back to the overwhelming need for tanks. So, if you're a healer, and you have 2 (or 3) hours to spare for a pug for ZA or ZG, go ahead and queue to get your chance at free mounts. But do yourself a favor: study up on the fights just a bit in case they ask you to explain it.

The Difficulty of Gearing a DPS

I have been out of the blogging loop for so long now, I had to practically re-learn most of my blog. I changed my comments right in the middle of my hiatus, so I'm still not sure if they're working correctly. I try to respond to most comments, but since I also haven't been writing much, I can't expect many comments. At any rate, if I don't respond to a question posted, just e-mail me.

Now, on to the current subject.

I've been playing my Resto Shaman for quite some time now. I had pretty much retired Leiandra, my mage, and even dabbled a bit with my druid tank. For a change, (and to be able to attend both GDKP runs we've been holding), I decided to pull the mage out of moth balls, and gear her up for ICC.

And amazingly, it's not as easy as I remembered or thought it would be. For all of you Gear-score people, she's about at a 2500 GS. Not horrible, but certainly has a lot of upgrades to get. Heck, she can even get a ton of upgrades out of the ICC 5-man instances. Heck! There's still about 250 Emblems of Triumph that would finish out her 232-ilvl gear. But it is absolutely insane the amount of time that I have to wait in the dungeon finder in order for me to get in an instance.

With both my healing shaman and tanking druid, I may have to wait up to 1 minute to get in an instance. Now, 1 minute is usually only if I have chosen specific dungeons to run. The random dungeons is pretty much instant group. In fact, they might as well change the button for tanks and healers to be "Join Group Now".

DPS, on the other hand, seems to take a little longer. I've waited around for 15 minutes before finding something else to do, and that's for the random dungeons. I can't even think how long I would have to wait if I chose a dungeon that people don't want to run, like say.. The Nexus. (which I happen to enjoy, but that's a whole different post.)

And I suppose it all makes sense. 60-70% of most raids are DPS. 60% of 5-man instances are DPS. If there were equal distribution of specs for each class, then you'd probably have about 66% of players doing DPS, but... I'm guessing it's a lot higher. Just a guess (with no data to back it up), I'm guessing that it's more like 80-90% of people want to just kill stuff.

In a class like a mage (or warlock, or rogue, or hunter), this is almost the reverse hybrid tax. (If you're not familiar with hybrid tax, see here.) Any of the hybrids out there can simply change spec, run the 5-mans on one of the easier specs to get into 5-mans, and be out of the instance before the pure dps classes can even get in an instance.

So, what's the answer? Well, the fastest thing is to make friends with a non-hybrid. If you're really good, you'll make friends with a tank AND a healer, and have them run heroics with you. At that point though, you'll probably get swamped with whispers if you throw out in trade chat, "LF 2 DPS for...". (In all honesty, there's such an over-abundance of DPS, it doesn't really matter how you finish that sentence.) And this brings me to my final point. As an effective tool, and compared to how well it works for healers and tanks, I'd even go as far as to say that the LFG tool is almost broken for DPS.

Which really brings it back to the root cause of what's fun to most people. The majority of people don't like to tank and heal. So, is there anything that Blizzard can do to make these roles fun? I know they've taken a look at healing in this regard. As far as what I've seen from Cataclysm Beta posts though, it seems they've merely tried to make healers not stare at bars as much. You actually have to look at the environment around you as well. But we shall see...

To sum up: Gearing a DPS? Get a pocket tank and healer to do it quickly and efficiently. :)

Gimpy Tank

The other night, I finally got a tank to level 80. That makes 3 80's for me: a mage (mostly hangs out with the other mages in Dalaran now), a shaman, and a feral druid. Class-wise, I can now cover every role needed. Gear-wise... well... now that's a different story. It's probably 2 of 3 roles (both on my Shaman) that I can cover in any instance right now.

Since I leveled a lot from 70 to 80 via the dungeon finder, I had some pretty decent gear. I was sporting all blues (which is probably better than any of my other fresh 80's). So, I'm for sure in the right gear area to start on heroics. But I also recognize that my gear sucks in comparison to the people I get randomly grouped with.

You see, the dungeon finder must compensate for a really badly geared person (probably especially a tank), by putting them with over-geared people. I swear the dps and healers I'm put with are all wearing Tier-12 gear. I let everyone know that I've only run a few heroics so they don't completely bad-mouth me. They're generally pretty nice. They keep me alive. The hunter constantly misdirects, and they even let me tank a mob or two. But the rest of them have about 30k health in their PVE gear, so they tank just as well as I do. So, in a way, I really feel like the tank in the picture. Only that I can move.

After 2 heroics (and the badges I'd saved up), I was able to buy my first T-9 piece of armor (my first epic). It's just such a paradigm shift from the types of tanks that I'm used to running with. Even healing on heroics I generally seemed to get decently geared tanks... usually. I just hope that I'm competent enough to make sure the encounters are successful to the best of my ability. So far, no deaths, but I've also only tanked 2 heroics. (Probably more of an achievement for the healers in my groups since so many other people are taking damage because they pulled aggro off me.)

But it is kind of fun to know that I can run into an instance and get multiple upgrades. It's different than my geared shaman where I'll be lucky if I get an item... I'm usually just counting on the badges to eventually get another piece of T-10. lol.

It's also a lot of fun to see these instances from a different perspective. It really is a different game when you're healing, tanking, and dps'ing. So, it's a lot of fun to change things up a bit. Then again, it also takes me a few heartbeats to heal an instance right after I've just tanked one on the other toon.

Asleep at the WoW

First off, I am totally stealing the name of Fim's blog for my post title today. It just seemed fitting. But it has nothing to do with him or his blog, other than the name. Maybe he's just on my mind since I'll be hanging out with him (and Nibuca) for the Twisted Nether Podcast later this week. But more on that tomorrow.

Last night, I logged on to Wow simply so I could do the dailies for Brewfest and then be done with this holiday. That's how close I am. In the portal trip from Dalaraan to Iron Forge, the guild asked if I had time to run an instance because their pally had DC'ed on them. It was the daily heroic, they had already taken a boss down, so I figured, why not. UP went smoothly. Since we were out there, we decided to roll that group (less the one guildie since my wife wanted to play) into Utgarde Keep.

Somewhere in this instance is where the sleepiness started to set in. I generally go to sleep before I get as tired as I used to. But it just kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. We made it through UK easily, and I was ready to log off. So was my wife for that matter.

"Gonna go hand in the quest, you guys want to do VH really quick?" came the question from one of the guildies in the group. I really, really should have listened to my sleepiness and said no, but since my wife really needs the +hit trinket from there, I said we'd go. Now keep in mind, this is the trinket that I tell her she needs, not that she desperately wants or anything. She's started to hate VH, but she's really, really not a fan of doing instance over and over again. Been there, done that, that's her motto.

Nevertheless, we entered VH. Sleep was still creeping up on me and starting to take over. The first boss was Zuramat the Obliterator. It was easy enough. We even did the achievement for it. Then came Xevozz. This is the guy you have to kite all over the room. I'm not sure if it was the tank's fault, or if I actually fell asleep, or if it was some random bug, but I vaguely remember the tank's health go from full to 1/2 to dead. I'm sure I tried to cast a heal, but to be honest, I'm also not 100% sure.

And the worst thing about that instance (as well as the in TBC Black Morass), is that if you screw up, you have to start all over. So, you have to kill Zuramat (or whichever boss you had the first time), and you get no loot from him. Nothing.

Finished the instance the second time with no problems. Quickly bid the guild goodnight, and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep just as soon as my head hit the pillow. Lucky I remembered to turn on my alarm or I know I would have way overslept.

So, yes... that "just 1 more" mentality is still alive and well with me. Even if it's at like 9:30 and I'm falling asleep. (Not the normal bed time, but was just way wiped out.)

Healing for Coren Direbrew

For a short window of only two weeks, heroes have a chance to take on one of the deadliest strongest hardest drunkest bosses in all of Wow. This may be one of the trickiest fights to heal for in all of Wow. Possibly even more difficult than Heroic Hogger. This is.... Coren Direbrew. Dun! Dun! Dun!!!

Okay, in case you didn't get the sarcasm from the opening paragraph, Coren Direbrew is not a difficult boss. Yes, he's the guy you go kill in Black Rock Depths bar as a daily quest. So, with a 5-man party, you can kill him 5 times. If you keep bringing new toons in like we did, you can kill him upwards of 14 times

So, I got the Ancient Pickled Egg, which was a decent upgrade for my healer. I won one of the Stamina trinkets, but gave it up to one of our tanks. We had two Great Brewfest Kodos drop. Which is a heck of a lot more than I saw last year. Two other people actually won the rolls, but they each gave them to other people. (It was an all guildie thing so no biggie there.) One was given to one of our druids that really, really wanted it. And the other one was given to me since the original owner probably wouldn't use it, and I thought it was pretty darn cool. We didn't see the Ram drop, nor did we see the Tankard O' Terror. But I think we saw every other drop.

Oh! Anyway.. back to the subject of the post. Again, it was mostly satirical. With a decently geared tank, he's pretty much a pushover. He can be disarmed. And at one point, my wife's shadow priest was healing with Vamperic Embrace. So... yeah... no need to consult bosskillers on this one. Just have all 5 people dps. Maybe throw down a healing totem just in case... but that's about it.

Yep... it was seriously that easy. I kind of snickered when at one point, I saw 3 people advertising in General Chat: "Healer LFM for Brewfest." Hmm... I wonder if I can solo him... Maybe I'll try that tonight.

Raid Instance Comparisons

A comment by Guest yesterday got me really thinking about the Raid Instances that we've had in World of Warcraft. So, I thought I'd start with a little table and then draw some conclusions from there.

Vanilla	TBC	Wrath
UBRS	Karazhan	Naxxramas (2)
	Gruul's Lair (1)	Obsidian Sanctum (1)
Zul'Gurub	Magtheridon's Lair (1)	Eye of Eternity (1)
Onyxia's Lair (1)	Zul'Aman	Vault of Archavon (1)
Molten Core	Serpentshrine Cavern	Ulduar
Blackwing Lair	TK: The Eye	Trial of the Crusader
Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj	Mount Hyjal	Onyxia's Lair (1)(2)
Temple of Ahn'Qirj	Black Temple
Naxxramas	Sunwell Plateau	Icecrown Citadel

(1) Single Boss Encounter Instance
(2) Recycled Instance

As for my footnotes, I am very well aware that Gruul's Lair had 2 boss encounters and technically EoE has 4. Furthermore, I'm also aware that VoA will soon have 3 bosses. But I believe it is fair to lump them into one category and compare them because they're much shorter instances. If you want to talk about environment, you could even consider Trial of the Crusader as a Single Room Encounter, which meant a heck of a lot less work for the graphic designers. lol.

Further clarifications: I put a space between UBRS and Zul'Gurub since UBRS was still 10-man (down from 15 at a certain point) and Zul'Gurub being a 20-man instance seemed that it needed more coordination and "raid" tactics.

All of that said, Blizzard did a lot in the first few years of Wow. They created 9 classes (8 playable by each faction). They created 2 continents, 24 5-man instances, and 8 raids. Not too shabby. Granted this was all work done from alpha to beta to about 2 years and 2 months until the next expansion came: The Burning Crusade. They then gave us another continent, flying mounts, 16 5-man instances, and 9 raids. Then about a year and 10 months later, Wrath of the Lich King came. So far, we know that they have given us a new continent, 13 5-man instances, and 6 raids with 2 more (Onyxia's Lair and Icecrown Citadel) on the way.

Recycled
Of the 8 raids in Wrath, 2 of them will be completely recycled from Original Wow. Honestly, I'm completely okay with that. I don't think a lot of people (as a percent of the whole) got a chance to run Naxx or, to a lesser extent, Ony before TBC came out. So, it's good that people now get to go back and see these fights. Especially with Blizzard's redirection that everybody should be able to see raids, it just makes sense.

Albeit, I recognize that there's been less development time, but if you factor in that these 2 instances got recycled from before, the true number is really down to about 6 new instances. And 3 of those are Single Boss Encounters (4 if you count Trial of the Crusader).

Now, I'm not saying that any of the Single Encounters are bad instances. I'm simply saying that they seem like they'd take a heck of a lot less work. And yes, Blizzard has given us these hard mode options to them to make them last a little longer... it's not like it takes them the same amount of time as a brand new instance. If you've been around Wow for a bit of time, you know the excitement that comes with heading in to a recently released instance or raid (bugs and all).

Brand New With Quality
On the other hand, I have to really hand it to Blizzard for Ulduar. It's a fun instance. It really shows that Blizzard has learned what people like and don't like. People like to be able to mount in these huge zones, even if it's just in the first area. Being able to teleport around in Ulduar is also great. Graveyard run times are also greatly reduced. There's a repair person in the instance... at the beginning... and you don't even need to defeat a boss before you repair. It also uses the technology that they've been working so hard on (vehicles) and gives you credit for your awesome gear by making your vehicle stronger.

And from what I hear about Icecrown Citadel, it's going to be more of the same quality. I know it was only a joke, but Ghostcrawler joked that it would have 31 bosses. Even if it only has half that, it's still more than Ulduar has, so I really expect the same level of polish and newness to Icecrown.

But... wasn't that level of polish there in the Vanilla Wow? You know... in the first 8 raids that existed? Or will the trend simply continue and mean that in the next expansion, we'll all be farming Sunwell Plateau as soon as we hit 80?

The Oculus

With all the questing I've been doing in attempts to help my wife level and not bore her to death with the same instance over and over again, I haven't spent a lot of time going in to instances. Over the weekend, I finally got the achievement for completing Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, and The Oculus. To have visited all 5-man instances, I simply need to do an Utgarde Pinnacle run, so shouldn't be hard at all.

Granted, I only did them on normal mode, and not heroic, but I really didn't find any of those instances to be as annoying as all the feedback I've heard. In fact, out of all the instances I've done, I think Oculus is now on my top 3 list.

First off, the setup: I went in to Oculus with my wife and 3 RL best friends. We used the in-game chat since a couple people didn't think they had Vent, and didn't seem to want to take the time to download it. The in-game chat, while not a focus of this article fails on so many levels, the highest of which is that you can't keep talking while checking strategies on your local out of game web site. And finally, none of us had ever been in there before. So we were all forging new areas together. (Although I had read through the fights once, so it kinda gave me a head-up advantage and was designated as the person to figure out strategies.)

At any rate, here's what I like about The Oculus. There's a general complaint that most of the "cool" encounters are reserved for raids only. Heck, I can really think of anything that requires the coordination of something like Al'ar in Tempest Keep. Then again... kinda hard to be doing 7 things in a 5-man instance, but that's kinda besides the point.

The bosses in The Oculus however, have a semi-epic feel to them. And you have to freakin' ride a dragon around most of the instance. How cool is that? You even have to kill the last boss using a dragon!

I will admit that it was a bit of a challenge on a few of the bosses (mainly the 2nd one, but we wiped on the 3rd one once as well), but it was mainly because we'd never seen the encounters before. I'm confident we could run through it with no wipes with that group if we tried it again. And yes, I understand and am fully aware that there are additional challenges and abilities on Heroic mode. But I imagine, once geared, it's simply understanding those concepts, adjusting the strategy accordingly, and then once learned, simply running through it.

So... if you haven't been, take some time to head in to The Oculus. It might save you a small bit of time to read up before or take somebody that's already been, but all in all... it's was just fun. Taking down a boss on a dragon! How cool is that?!?

Tanking In Wrath: The Next Generation

In case you haven't heard, there's a lot of Aoe type pulls in the instances in Wrath of the Lich King Attack of the Melee. Every tanking class has been given tools to be able to Aoe tank. From a druid's Swipe to a Warrior's Thunder Clap to a Pally's Consecration, and finally to Death and Decay (and others) from a Death Knight.

And your job in Wow is to take hits. You're supposed to get all the mobs to hate you the most (assuming you're the only tank) so that they don't kill your healer or dps'ers. I just highlighted 4 spells that will do that for each tanking class.

But a pug run I went on last night became entertaining when I tanked most of the mobs.

Before we started the run, the DK (only tank class in the group) kept asking who was going to tank, even after he had already confirmed that he was going to. I wasn't even the one Aoe'ing to have mobs go all over the place. It was the healer... throwing heals. (The nerve, huh?) The tank would sometimes tank all the mobs, but more often then not, he just plain forgot.

So, equipped with Ice Barrier and Power Word: Shield (from the healer), I tanked a good portion of the mobs. It actually made the instance go faster, hence why I did it.

So, I submit to you that there should be a class review, and mages should now be able to tank. Arcane's the new Pvp Spec. Fire (with some frost and using Frostfire) is the new Pve spec. So, Frost should be the new tanking spec for mages. Get rid of spell pushback, and we "shouldn't" have an issue with aggro. Arcane Explosion could be our Aoe tanking spell. (We might need a glyph to increase threat there.) And with all our magic abilities there's got to be a way that we can create some type of armor (Ice Armor on steroids?) to make it as if we were wearing plate. Maybe Ice Armor scales with Intelect or Spellpower or something.

Heck, don't even make us stellar tanks. Make us Off-tanks that could pick up a mob in a pinch after we popped our Improved Ice Armor. And I'm sure we have the intellect to think up some spell that will make people attack us and only us.

I know, I know... I can hear it already. "Yeah, but that would make them impossible to kill in Pvp." Right... because there aren't any other high dps classes that wear plate. Sure...

So, there you have it. Straight from my creation to this blog (to your eyes)... Mages will be the next tanks. Now... who's gonna heal us? Warlocks!!!

Nothrend Instances - First 5

So far in Northrend, I've managed to ding 72, compete a good amount of quests, get to Dalaran, and complete the first five 5-man dungeons. For those at home who haven't been keeping track, or haven't looked it up yet, here's what those are:

Utgarde Keep (70-72)
The Nexus (71-73)
Azjol-Nerub (72-74)
Ahn'kahet (The Old Kingdom) (74-76)
Drak'Tharon Keep (74-76)

As you can see from the recommended level, I was a bit under on most of the instances. My gear was fine for it, it's really more the fact that because of the level difference (5 levels in some cases), I kept missing all over the place. I think at one point, my DPS was around 200. (Not exactly stellar for a mage of my level.)

I didn't take pictures; didn't want to spoil anything for anyone, but I was very impressed with the instances. The thing that I noticed the most is that they're short. Granted the group I was in for the upper dungeons were all higher level than me, but they hadn't really gotten very many gear upgrades. And the stuff that was dropping at that point was about on par with what they had. So, while a lesser gear grouped might take a little longer, it's still pretty feasible. I think we were joking that Azjol-Nerub is the Mt Hyjal 5-man of Nothrend. (One of those scripted pulls where things keep coming until you pull or kill the boss.)

So, by my count. That's almost 1/2 the 5-mans in Northrend. I'll wait a bit before doing The Violet Hold (75-77), and then maybe I can actually be a contributing member of the raid. lol. But overall, I'm having fun. And I don't even think I'll mind having to run these instances again and again for rep. Then again... we've only just begun, haven't we?

Old Skool UBRS

After a horrible, but successful Magtheridon run, and some honor farming for AV weekend, a small bunch of us thought it would be fun to run through UBRS just for kicks. There were 4 of us, and 2 of us had played long enough to remember the days when UBRS was kind of the "introduction" to raiding. Heck, we could also remember when UBRS was 15-man, but that's even more off the topic.

Our group consisted of myself (on my mage), one of our pally tanks (who was Retribution for the weekend, like usual), Elemental Shaman, an alt priest (level 51), and oddly enough, a 70 Pug hunter, that happened to be outside the instance portal while we were waiting for everyone to get there. (No summoning stones for us.)

The thought process in getting to the decision to run UBRS was something like, "Hey... won't this be fun?" And it kind of was, but it kind of wasn't. It might be fun to go run with a full group of 70's so we could just bust through it, but there's just too much trash to make it fun for just a group of 5. I'm not complaining or calling for a "Nerf UBRS". I'm just saying that nostalgic shouldn't have to take that long. :)

The most entertaining part of the evening was that the priest, who happened to be healing when it was needed, kept getting charged and pretty much one-shotted. I can't tell you how many times I heard "WTB rez, please." All said and done, with full red gear, I think she had a 1g repair bill though.

It got late, and right after The Beast, we decided to call it. Nobody else died at all. (And I do have to thank our priest for saving my butt quite a few times.) But there also wasn't really any motivation to see the rest. We'd shown 2 people most of what we endured over and over again at level 60.

I always thought it would be cool if Blizzard went back and did all the old skool instances with a heroic setting. Now having set foot in UBRS one more time... I'm really glad they didn't do that.

Playing Favorites

Almost any time you get a group of people together, you're going to have your favorites. Even grade school teachers that are supposed to treat all of their pupils the same, most certainly have some children that they like more than others. (Unless, of course, it's one of those grouchy teachers that hate all the children.)

Now, I'm going to take this post in two different directions. Basically, I'm making two stories become 1. Why, you ask? Because I can.

Last Friday, I made it happen that I hung out with my favorite people that play Wow. My wife wanted to play, and I suggested that we run an instance. Then so we wouldn't have to PUG it, I got my best friend (of 25 about years (Wow... has it really been that long?)), his brother, and his brother's wife. We've been friends for so long, that they're all my extended family. My best friend (who actually introduced us all to the game) got to tank for us, which was something he doesn't do much. (While he seems to have about 15 alts, I'd consider his "mains" a priest and a hunter.) My wife and I both dinged 67 while in Sethekk Halls. It was a lot of fun to just hang out and do an instance.

I've found that I'm a voice communication elitist though. They suggested using the in-game chat system, and I claimed that I couldn't take an hour (or however long the instance took) using tin cans. So, I made them all download the latest version of Vent, and we used our guild's Vent server.

Why was this so different than any other night? Well, my wife hasn't hit 70 yet, and so she hasn't raided at all. My other friends aren't really raiders either. They like instances, but aren't the 4-night a week dungeon crawlers that the rest of my guild is. So, we chat almost nightly through our own in-game channel, and then get together on fun nights like last Friday.

I wouldn't trade my guild, but it's a heck of a lot of fun to hang out with RL friends as well.

Next favorite: This one was a case of me wanting to play favorites. One of my guild members was asking if we could basically alter the DKP system we have so that he (it could also be a she, but I'll use "he" for simplification) could get a T-5 item before others of the same token group. This guildie's argument was that they'd been running with us for a long time, and because we have a zero-sum DKP system, some of the newer guild members might get some loot before him. I really wanted to make it happen because I like the "guy", but there was really nothing I could do. We'd set the policy, to maintain the integrity of it, we must adhere to it. Any deviation would most certainly be cause to scream "murder" from other guildies. So, as much as I wanted him to get what he wanted, there was nothing I could do. I took a day to think about it. Then explained why we couldn't do anything about it. I told him that he's one of my favorites (which is true.. the "guy" is always very nice and considerate and asks me what he can do to improve), and after the explanation, he understood why we couldn't change it.

So, the point being here... you can play favorites, but just don't screw up established rules. :)

Orb of the Sin'dorei

I spent a lot of the weekend working on my honor so I can get an upgrade to my neck of the Vindicator's Pendant of Subjugation. I started with about 2,000 honor, and fell asleep on Saturday night without even playing. Woke up wide awake at about 3, and played for a couple hours before heading back to bed. So, I'm now sitting at about 13,000 honor, so hopefully I can get the rest (with daily and mark turn-ins) before our raid tonight. It's just Gruul and Mag, so not like it's going to make or break the raid, but still... just something I want to accomplish.

I did take a break to run Heroic MrT with guildies. I really enjoy that instance. It's still kind of challenging, but the fights are also kinda fun. Not sure why... but to me, it seems that you have to think in them a little bit more than some of the other instances. I don't think I'm really looking for upgrades in gear there, but I enjoy being there. And the Badges of Justice are nice as well.

At any rate, last night when I ran it, the Orb of the Sin'dorei dropped off of Vexallus, and I won. Now, I never picked up the Orb of Deception, but I think I was mistaken about the Deception one. My understanding of it was that you could stay in that form for as long as you like... which isn't the case. Come to find out, they're both pretty much the same thing. 30-minute cooldown. You stay in the form for 5 minutes. I like that the Sin'dorei is not a trinket... can cast it at any time.

Will it help me in PvP? Will I now be able to take down Illidan simply because I have it? Of course not. It's just one of the little, fun things that make the game enjoyable. Personally, I've gotten pretty sick of the non-combat pets (went through my bags and threw them all out), but this is kinda fun for me. I think the pet thing comes from seeing 10 of them in a 25-man raid. Just put them away, people. They're annoying.

Back on topic... it's kinda fun to be a Blood Elf. I get to jump funny. I get to tell different /sillys and /flirts. And I get a dance that isn't lame. Oh wait... not sure which is worse: Human female or Blood Elf female. The Macarena or Britney Spears. Wow... tough call.

New Mag and H-MrT

I think I may now be fighting an uphill battle with the name of Magister's Terrace. When at least 1/2 of my own guild calls it MgT, I know I'm in trouble. But being the GM, I should have complete control over everything they say and do, right? Yeah... that ain't happening.

Monday night I missed the raid because I was out in the area of the new house I spoke of. We started going out there at about quarter to 1 in the afternoon, and didn't get home until about 9:30. Yeah... it was a long day. But we do have a deposit down on the last model of this phase. Woo hoo! Funny thing is, about 2 minutes after we put down our deposit, another couple wanted to buy the property. Wow... that was close. House won't be completed until end of August though... so gotta figure out which bridge to live under for the summer.

But the report from the guild is that, sure enough, Magtheridon is much easier. Only one group of clickers is needed, and it's extremely easy, especially if you're used to what it was pre-2.4. Furthermore, he's become a real loot pinata. Drops the 20-slot bag, Pit Lord's Satchel and a Black Sack of Gems that contains Epic Gems. And he drops a ton of gold, so yeah... why wouldn't we kill him every week?

The trip into Void Reaver last night was a bit tricky for us. We didn't have a hunter, and we didn't have a pally tank for that first coridor. It just made things more interesting. And not having the Misdirect during Void Reaver meant some DPS pulled aggro a couple of times. /sigh. But again... not a huge concern. Tonight, we're going to try 4 tanks for Al'ar. Hopefully that added DPS slot will be enough do DPS down the embers fast enough and take down Al'ar.

So... Heroic Magisters' Terrace. It's really a lot like Alcatraz in that the Heroic and non-Heroic versions aren't all that much different. Kael has a Pyroblast on Heroic version, that you have to dps down this shield before you can interrupt him. And that's about it. Honestly, everything seemed to be about the same. Mobs just hit harder, but you'd expect that. So, if you find normal Magisters' Terrace to be a breeze, then just set it on heroic... really... it's not that much more challenging.

First Impressions: Heroic Magisters' Terrace

To give a quick report of yesterday's raid: Yes, we downed Void Reaver. Yes, it took us paying attention a bit more. And I'll even admit that I died and spent most of the fight coordinating while laying on the ground. (Got caught trying to figure out who should battle rez whom, and not looking out for orbs.)

After that, a group of us went to Heroic Magisters' Terrace. It was actually quite fun and a bit of a challenge. I really enjoyed it. We got the first two bosses down, and then the server reset. We went back in to the instance to find that all of the trash had respawned. While discussing whether we wanted to clear the trash again, we got another message that the server would restart again in 15 minutes. So, we called it a night.

The trash mobs themselves aren't all that hard, you just have to have ways of dealing with them. Our group consisted of me (the mage), a warlock, a rogue, and two druids (one feral and one resto). So, we could CC up to 4 mobs... I'm sure that helped out a lot. There's an imp in a lot of the groups, that can be stunlocked/solo'ed by our rogue. If he was resummoned though, he'd wreck a bit of havoc fireballing the healer.

Selin Fireheart wasn't too much of an issue. Just have to DPS him down quick and when he starts siphoning the Fel Crystals, kill them very, very quick. Other than that... it's really your basic tank and spank.

There's then a few pulls into the next few rooms that required a bit of Aoe'ing (at least with our group), but it went quite smoothly for us.

Vexallus gave us a bit more of a headache. Here's what worked for us after a couple attempts. He spawns two Pure Energy adds every 15% of his health. They have an insanely low amount of health. I would one-shot Fireblast them, but I'm sure that was overkill. Then the warlock would take out the other. We held off damaging the boss so that the 30-second Dot/debuff we got from killing the Pure Energy wouldn't stack twice. The rogue was even doing white damage (or less) for most of the fight to slow it down. Then when he hit 20% health and went into his Overload, we all kicked up the DPS as high as we could and killed him before he could take us out.

There's apparently a lot of other ways to deal with the debuff, such as iceblock, letting pets get hit with it, etc. Our way sees like it would work with almost any group make up. Also, our tank had a good amount of Arcane Resist... that helped out a lot as well.

We had the server reset(s) shortly after that, so not much else to talk about. We'll see if I can't get in there again soon so we can attempt the Priestess (which I hear is a heck of a lot harder... we'll see).

Scipted Events

I got all excited about writing this post because I had finally killed the last boss in all the current 5-man instances, but then I realized I still had one more. The point I was excited about, was that I was in Heroic Sethekk Halls last night, and a druid needed to come in for her epic flight form quest to summon Anzu. That was the first time I had seen, and subsequently killed, that boss. The elation was destroyed when I realized that I still haven't seen Yor in Mana-Tombs, although it is tentatively scheduled for this weekend.

As Anzu was summoned, I took the chance to take a look around at what was going on. I figured it may be one of the few times I actually see this event, so I wanted to take advantage of it. I won't give any spoilers, but it was stunning. Just one of those moments where you know they spent a lot of time on the visuals.

But it got me thinking about different scripted events in Wow (which I love, by the way). The first major scripted event I can think of that really impressed me was back in the day in Stratholme. In Slaughter Square before you can take on Ramstein the Gorger or Baron Rivendare himself, you get locked in the courtyard and there's an army of Bile Spewers and Venom Belchers that will come in and attack you in a timed sequence if you don't engage them first. If you somehow survive this onslaught, an even larger undead army comes in attempts to finish you off. Now, I made this more dramatic then most of you probably remember it, because it became so easy. But if you did it with non-epic gear, and especially in a 5-man group, it was a pretty big challenge.

Fast forwarding to the Burning Crusade, and you've got Black Morass, that is just one big scripted/timed event (cool concept btw). Even though it can be a pain in the butt, I really enjoy Harbinger Skyriss in Arcatraz as well. The bit of Blizzard humor with Millhouse Manastorm is also humorous (at least the first few times).

Oh sure, there's a ton of raid instances that are scripted as well. Think of the whole Opera Event in Karazhan for another fun example. They don't even have to be in an instance either. Battle of Darrowshire comes immediately to mind. I just really enjoy them, and thank Blizzard for some of these fun moments.

So, what are some of your fun or enjoyable scripted events in Wow?

Starting Over

A friend of mine has recently come back to playing World of Warcraft. This is his second time coming back after deciding that WoW took over his life enough that his wife was getting seriously upset over him playing. The last time he was playing was just a short time before the expansion. Upon leaving, he deletes his characters so that there is no chance he'll be tempted to resubscribe. I mean, who would want to level to 60 again, right? Well, this time, instead of leveling to 60 70, he stole his account back from his nephew who was no longer playing. And lo and behold, his nephew had a 70 paladin. Granted it was on a different server, but the paid transfer was a heck of a lot less excruciating then taking a toon from 1-70 would have been.

It's funny to find out about all of the things that his nephew has done with is paladin. For example, I believe he said he has 3 land mounts in his bags. So... a horse (he is human after all), an epic horse, and a PVP Battle Tiger. Oh, but nevermind the fact that he's a paladin and he can summon both a normal and epic mount. lol.

Well, last night I started helping him get keyed for Karazhan. It was quite humorous the back and forth conversation that we had. We spent a good portion of time figuring out that while he had started the quest chain, he hadn't gotten the 2nd and 3rd key fragments yet. Once we got those, it was off to BM to get the actual key.

"Wait. Have you done Durnholde?" I asked. "How would I know that?" We figured he was because he has the Mount Hyjal quest, but upon attempted entry to Black Morass, he was denied. So, it was off to Durnholde to rescue Thrall. Luckily the people that we were with were all guildies where I could explain the situation. Otherwise, I'm sure they would have thought he got his account off of e-bay.

So, besides all of that confusion, we also finished off Attuman and Nightbane. So, 4 instances in one night. Granted they weren't 4 full instances, but still. Hmm... maybe I should get out of all the dungeon crawling so I can make some money every once and awhile. I'll make that my goal for the next week or so.

What a Difference a Day Makes

I've been working on getting some badges to purple out the last few things I've wanted and help some guildies get geared up as well. The fastest, "easiest" way that we know of is Heroic Mechanar, and the general consensus tends to agree with us. So, myself, a rogue, a prot. warrior, and a feral druid all grouped up to go to Mech. In case you didn't catch that, we were short a healer. The LFG channel conjured up a resto Shaman that agreed to go with us.

If you've ever been in a group that has a know-it-all that didn't really know anything, you'll understand what this Mechanar run was like. Most of us have a lot of experience running that instance, but I'm always open to suggestions. Of course, after that run, I'm less inclined to try something new. We wiped a number of times. It got so late that I started to fall asleep. On top of the that, the Shammy wasn't geared very well at all. We ended up skipping the second to last boss, Nethermancer Sepethrea and wiping numerous times on Pathlaleon the Calculator. Overall, just a really painful run.

The next night, our same group of 4 found itself again needing a healer. As the night before, there were no guild healers available. So, off to the LFG channel again. After my first "LF Healer for Heroic Mech" post, I got a response that a level 33 had a level 70 priest that could come. Call me a skeptic, but it was almost as if he was a bit too eager to come. I imagined him in greens with maybe a couple blues from quest rewards. I pretty much imagined a repeat from the night before, but with a priest instead of a shaman. Boy, was I wrong. This guy was decked in mostly purple. Not even sure why he wanted to run Mech, to be honest. lol. It wasn't a perfect run, but it went so much smoother. We easily took down the bosses with minimal deaths. We did skip Nethermancer Septhrea again, but we gave her a couple attempts before we decided we were just too tired to try again. But we probably could have done it.

It's not really "when good groups go bad". It's just always amazing to me how the key elements like a tank or healer can make a, well... a good group go bad. (Ugh, how cliché.)

Consortium Rep

Starting out with my Everquest 2 days... when you got a higher standing with different groups, you would be seen differently. Guards might hail you as you walk by where as before you were completely ignored. It's been awhile since I've played, but I believe they would even salute you as you walked by if you had the minimum "reputation".

So, what's with all of the factions in World of Warcraft? You don't really get much. At Honored, all factions will give you 10% off their goods. I'm down with that. Great idea. What bothers me slightly is that after that, you really don't get much. Think about it. "Exalted" is a pretty high word to mean "we'll sell you this one item." But at least one faction in WoW will give you something worthwhile.

The Consortium can be found throughout all of Outlands. They're ethereal smugglers, traders and thieves who are led by Nexus-Prince Haramad. The greatest thing about them is they never stop giving. Once you reach a reputation of Friendly, you get a monthly salary that you can pick up from Gezhe in Aeris Landing in Nagrand. (Edit: Thanks Lichas for reminding me.) This salary is a bag of gems. As you progress up the reputation chain, you get better and more gems in the bag. So, not only do they have items and patterns that you obtain through reputation, but you also get a monthly dividend!

I want to see more of this type of faction in the expansion. But how do you get reputation with them? The simplest way is simply to do Mana Tombs over and over again. Once you hit Honored, you'll have to get Lower City reputation so that you can can get the key for Heroic Mana Tombs.

Most likely you won't live in Mana Tombs though. You may even get sick of running instances. And I only said it's the simplest way, not the fastest. There's quests all over for these guys. If you see an ethereal, and he's got a quest, most likely it will give you Consortium rep. You can see the quests over at WoWWiki. Of particular note, you'll want to complete Seek Out Ameer which starts in Stormspire, and then A Mission of Mercy. Once you've complete A Mission of Mercy, you can then collect [Ethereum Prison Key] in Heroic Mana Tombs. These will allow you to complete other quests, and eventually summon a 4th boss in Heroic Mana Tombs.

For the solo player, besides the normal quests there's also a couple of repeatable quests that do not require a group. You can complete Obsedian Warbeads and A Heap of Ethereals (Zaxxis Insignias) by pure grinding. The other repeatable quests are Ethereum Secrets obtained at Honored and A Thousand Worlds obtained at Revered.

Myself having only reached Honored, I haven't reaped a lot of the gem benefits from these guys. I've asked people to run Heroic Mana Tombs a lot of times, and I mostly get turned down. When I do get people in there and they realize they're getting Consortium Rep, they're usually excited about that. Maybe I just need to do a better job at my marketing. LFM for Heroic Mana Tombs should now become LFM for Heroic Consortium Rep Run.

"Oh... Karazhan is Sooo Easy"

On certain occasions, I remember back to when I was a recent 60. Our guild, Cracked Anvil Trading Co., was pretty much all recent 60's. This was before the patch, that changed many of the level 60 instances (Stratholme and Scholomance) into 5-man only instances. You were able to zerg these instances with 10 people, and farming your Dungeon Set 1 armor wasn't much of a problem. Well, our guild, being almost all noobs at the time, set out on our first raid of Stratholme, live side. If I recall correctly, we didn't even have everyone at level 60. I'm sure we didn't have a single purple; and if we were lucky, we had a blue. It was an ugly experience, and I think, after time, we eventually cleared that first corridor... I think. Fast forward a few weeks, and we could clear it no problem. Fast forward some more time and the whole instance became easy. Even after the dreaded 5-man cap patch... it was an adjustment, but it eventually became easy.

A huge part of this "easy" mode for dungeons is basic knowledge. If everyone is familiar with the tricks and strategies to kill Boss X, then it makes the event so much easier. The other part, is the gear that you obtain makes you more effective at your role.

Bring this into current day, and I hear many people say that Karazhan is easy. If you don't believe me, head on over to the official WoW forums. You can read many people screaming about the ease of Karazhan... how it should be on a 3-day reset instead of 7... how it's a shame that there's not a heroic setting for Karazhan. I think people forget that this dungeon is helping people ramp up, that there's a learning curve, that people still need gear from there to make them successful, gear from bosses that are difficult to clear in a raid of full blue armor.

This idea comes up because of a run I did last night. It's only my third time doing Slave Pens on heroic mode. First night was a bear. Second was much more of a breeze. Last night, however, we didn't have a single death to our party. It became "easy". We all knew the pulls or we had somebody with enough knowledge to tell us what to do. We had a skilled tank, healer, and DPS. While there's still things in there that we want, the instance is probably slightly beneath us as far as our level with our gear.

So now when somebody brings up Slave Pens, I can easily say "that's easy", but is it? With other players at my gear level, it certainly is. I'm sure to a Black Temple geared group, Karazhan would be easy. I doubt there's anything really "difficult" in the game. It's just about gaining the knowledge, gearing up, and then eventually, most things become easy.

Even more pointed to me, there are parts of Karazhan that have become easy, but we certainly haven't mastered the whole thing. Even in our own guild, we have people that struggle more with some of the "easy" bosses. It will take time, but I'm sure eventually, we will all find the instance easy.

Heroic Slave Pens with a Side of PVP

After falling a bit short on numbers for a Kara run last night*, we decided to take 5 of us and have fun in Heroic Slave Pens. Trodar and I got to the meeting stone first, and Trodar decided to have some fun with the Horde that were sitting out there. So, he flagged himself pvp as bait, and waited for the 3 of them to attack. Sure enough, they took the bait and attacked him. I started in as well, but the 3 of them got us. Thellonious, Davecrocket, and Encore were still on their way while Trodar and I ran back. (Of note, they've moved the graveyard to Coilfang Reservoir a bit closer so it's not as painful to ghost back.) With the 5 of us (and their ranks had swelled to at least 6), we pretty easily mowed through them, and then went into Steamvaults by mistake. We buffed up, ran back outside to enter Slave Pens, and then killed them again as we changed instances.

I find that I'm actually enjoying PVP for once. I've got some decent gear that seems to put me on par with other people, and the PVP that I've been doing lately has been with a good group (including a healer) that knows how to PVP and communicate. So, who knows... on some of the days off of Karazhan, maybe I'll play in some of the battlegrounds a bit.

Anyway... we then started on Slave Pens of the heroic variety. The last and only time I've done Slave Pens, we may have been a bit undergeared. Each pull was just painful. We were getting through it through many wipes. Sometimes we'd have to kill 1/2 the group, die, come back, and then kill the other 1/2 the group. It made for a long evening. After a long time fighting like that, and after killing 2 of the 3 bosses, we had decided that we had had enough, and we called it quits.

That was the last time. Last night, however, was a completely different story. We pranced through the instance with relative ease. Yeah, we had a death here or there, but no wipes. Myself, I'm pretty squishy, so I think I died the most. (Note to self: need more stam gear.) But it was a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong, I love a good challenge. But when it feels like you're beating your head against the wall, like it did last time, it's kinda no fun. There were a number of challenges last night, we just dealt with them well, and overall, it was a very smooth run.

Quagmirran dropped the Pauldrons of Mighty Magic which we sharded with no Shaman in our group. I was really shooting for the Boots of Blasphemy... I guess I'll have to run it again.


*We'll be reverting to 1 group in Kara with others doing Heroic instances until we can get a few more people that are on consistently.