"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.

Guild Professions

So, I was giving thought to all of the professions in World of Warcraft. There's not a lot of professions that benefit the guild as a whole. For example, there's not a lot a Blacksmith can do for a mage or warlock. Sure, they could make the Eternium Runed Blade, but that's a one-time thing, and then they're done. Tailors can make bags, but after everyone has 20-slot bags, there's not much more they can do. I'm being slightly flippant and over-simplifying, but I think you get the point. Furthermore, these few items can "easily" be bought through the trade channel or the Auction House.

But there are some professions that benefit everyone. Enchanting is one such profession. No matter what class, there's enchants that will help most of your armor. Yes, technically you can argue that Leatherworking can do the same, but that's just one small aspect of Leatherworking, and the rep "enchants" seem to take care of me just fine. Almost every time somebody gets a new shiny equipable item, they'll need it enchanted. So, what should be required of a Guild Enchanter? Accessibility would probably be a big thing, in my book. Because the enchants cannot take place through the mail or AH, you need somebody that will be online most of the time. You also need somebody that will be in instances (those BoP recipe enchants can be such a pain).

Jewelcrafters are very similar to enchanting in this fashion; and again, everyone can benefit from their end products. The one thing that makes them more accessible, is that gems can be sent through the mail. Reputation seems pretty important as well as it seems that there are a lot of recipes that are by reputation only.

At least on Bronzebeard, I can see where a Guild Alchemist (or two) would be huge. Get one specialized in Elixirs and one in Potions, and all of your potion making can be funneled through these two people. Unless I'm wrong, transmutes are still only 1 per day, so it doesn't make sense to funnel all guild transmutes through one person. Just like a specialized Tailor should in no way give up his extra primal mooncloth manufacturing over to whoever is next in line. But to have a chance to get free potions or elixirs... that's awesome!

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that other professions are useless. As a mage/tailor, I love my spellcloth set. Every profession has a lot of things that can benefit many people. I'm just pointing out the universal need for enchants, gems, and elixirs/potions.

What are your thoughts on Guild Professions?

A New Reign

Last night, we had one goal, and one goal only: to dethrone the Prince. It's so cliché to say that this fight is luck based on the positioning of the Infernals, so I won't say that. I will say that certain positioning makes the fight easier, but I'm guessing that it's rarely unbeatable. That said, it took us a few tries to learn our last little lessons in order to get him down. One really key item is to have somebody always orchestrating the dance of positioning the ranged DPS and the Prince with the tank based on the Infernals. Qamen did a great job watching the incoming meteors, estimating where they would drop, and positioning us accordingly. One of our latter attempts we had him down to about 10% before most of our DPS were killed off, ending with a full wipe at 3%. I think we only had 2 people dead when the Prince actually died.

The [Helm of the Fallen Hero] dropped, giving me a 1 in 4 chance to get my T4 head piece. I out rolled 2 people, and the third person passed. I am now the proud owner of the [Collar of the Aldor]. It looks kinda funny on Leiandra, to be quite honest. But no, you can't have it. lol. I'm also realizing how expensive it is to upgrade my gear these days. After I traded in the token for the head piece, I got the 90g head enchant from the Sha'tar. Plus I had to run out to Allerian Stronghold to buy a [Swift Starfire Diamond] with 8 Spirit Shards (those were "cheap" since I have about 50 just sitting in my bank), and then another 45g to get a [Glowing Nightseye]. If I hadn't done all that, the [Spellstrike Hood] would have been a better piece. I'm not complaining, just telling what I did.

This week has been really good to me as far as loot goes. I got the [Gloves of the Fallen Hero] (by default since the other two mages had it and we didn't have any warlocks or hunters in the group that night) off of the Curator. That translates into [Gloves of the Aldor], but I don't think it's worth it to use those and give up my [Spellfire Gloves] and the set bonus there. By some charity, I got the [Mantle of the Mind Flayer] off of Shade of Aran. I got the [Brooch of Unquenchable Fury] off of Moroes. And I hit exalted with Violet Eye, so I can now exchange my ring for the best ring from them (which again will cost me in enchanting mats to put the +12 Spell Damage on it).

I'm really excited about the loot, but I'm even more excited that we're progressing, downing more bosses, and gearing up to take on even more bosses. Next week we should start 2 Kara groups again. And then we'll see what we can do in Gruul's Lair on Saturday night. It'll be fun to see everyone else get purpleized as well. Until next week!

Winds of Change

I'm looking into a few things to change the layout of the blog. I'll blog about last night tomorrow.

More Zul'Aman

If you head on over to the Warcry network, they have some more details from E3 about the next new instance of Zul'Aman. The article goes into more details, but there will be Bear, Lynx, Eagle, and Dragonhawk boss. Much like Zul'Gurub, you can access any of these bosses from the beginning. Each of these four bosses should take about 45 minutes to an hour for a good group, and then the last 2 encounters must be done at once.

There will be no reputation associated with Zul'Aman, but the faster you finish the bosses, the better loot you get. Blizzard also sees this becoming somewhat of a competitive sport. Also on loot, they're going to move more towards logical loot. Basically... "players can expect creatures to drop things that one would expect. If that bad guy is holding a big, shiny axe, then odds are his loot is a big shiny axe." Makes sense, but not really earth shattering to me. Who doesn't look at loot tables? lol.

Voice Chat is once again confirmed for patch 2.2. That was also confirmed on the PTR forums as well. One thing that might be fun is that Blizzard would eventually like to be able to put in voice fonts (distortion that makes the user's voice sound a bit like the creature they're playing). That could be neat, but I've kinda grown accustomed to most of the voices in my guild... that might be a pain to get used to the "new" voices.

Last thing: Guild banks will be coming the future. The GM will be able to set permissions on each bag so that different ranks in the guild will be able to access different levels of bags. Just helps assure that the new guy doesn't steal all the BOE purples you've got laying around.

Dun Morogh Airfield

After Adventar told me about a little expedition he had up to the airfield near Iron Forge, I had to go too. Personally, I thought it was no longer accessible, but it's really not that hard to get to at all. WoWWiki has a good article on how to get there using one of three ways. I used the third way as that was where Adventar went (and the video linked on WoWWiki was of help as well). The only challenging part was the first jump behind the tree. I did it pretty easily the first time I went up, but then when Byasaz and Mattosaur wanted to come along with me, it took us a bit more time. But we finally made it up to the airport.

We explored a bit after that and found the trolls (level 8 or so) constantly fighting the dwarves up there. The dwarf guard in the picture above was crying, but who knows what about. It's just a fun place to visit... once. Unless you're gonna be farming for linen, you're probably okay if you don't come here more than once. The other place we explored was on the top of Iron Forge. Byasaz said it was the second highest elevation point in all of Azeroth. What's the first? I have no idea.

So, after we took this shot, I opened a portal for my friends, and decided to have one more adventure for the evening. With a stack of Light Feathers that I always carry, I casted slow fall, mounted up, and then jumped off the mountain towards Menethil Harbor. I had to dismount and recast slow fall 2 times before it expired with me only about 10 feet above the water's surface, so the fall was about a minute and a half. It was a great ride. Almost like parachuting in real life, just without all that annoying wind in my hair, and I didn't lose a contact either. As you can see from the map, I landed on the other side of Menethil Harbor. I'd highly recommend this jump for any mage or priest. I'm not sure that anyone else would survive the fall or be able to glide for quite as long.

BUGGED!!! and Illhoof down

Prince Malchezaar isn't an extremely bad dude. In fact, if the Infernals weren't landing all over the place, he'd probably be quite easy. But he does become substantially more difficult if you only have 8 people to take him down. Last night we discovered a few things. So much so, that I could almost put the label as Beginning Tips. So, in case you didn't know...

• If you don't kill all the bosses in Karazhan, things respawn. Be careful as you move towards a boss you have not yet downed this week.
• I suppose this goes for any boss that has a door.If you start a game of chess, you have to finish it. During the chess game, everyone gets a permanent debuff where no spells or attacks of any kind can be used.
• When Prince Malchezaar is engaged, make sure you're on the correct side of the door. It will close, and you can be locked out.
• Sometimes GM's are helpful and funny, sometimes they are not.

We started out the night having a few members believe that everything was clear from Shade's room (where we could now be teleported) to the Chess Event. Imagine their surprise when they ran into that first room only to get ambushed by a Sorcerous Shade or two.

On our way to Prince, one of our members thought it would be fun to talk with Warchief Blackhand since our usual experiences only let us speak with King Llane. He did so, and unintentionally started another game of chess. With our full raid buffs, I don't think that anyone really noticed that we were all silenced to both spells and normal attacks. So, we made the next pull and quickly found our mistake. Corpse run. Killed King Llane (had to be different that normal). Then we proceeded as normal.

Got out to Netherspace where Prince hangs out. Explained the fight and our strategy, and then we moved in to engage. Well, our two warlocks didn't realize that we were starting, and were on the wrong side of the door when it closed, leaving us with only 8 people to fight Prince. We figured it would probably result in a wipe, but surprisingly did quite well even with the deficit. Corpse run. Raid buff. Engage.... what? I said "Engage!" Turns out we successfully bugged Prince so that we could not attack him ("Invalid Target") or even body pull him. So... we went on to the next boss.

Meanwhile, I had opened a ticket for a GM in the hopes that they could somehow help us with our plight with Prince. We were about to start fighting with Netherspite when he contacted me. There was mostly nothing he could do about Prince. He said that we could soft reset the instance (exit the instance for 45 minutes) and that should take care of it. It was late, the instance was to reset the next morning, and I don't think we still would have had 10 people if we had said, "Okay, everyone. Take a 45-minute break." It's just a shame that the GM's don't have more power when it comes to something like this.


We did leave on a positive note though. We had one warlock go grab her fire resist gear, and killed two pulls to get to Illhoof's room. With the warlock in 205 fire resist, it was a relatively easy fight. The first time we attempted it, we missed a small part of the explanation that didn't bode well for the fight. Corpse run. Raid buff. Explained further. Downed him quite simply. So, there's one more notch on our belts. We had a Breastplate of the Lightbringer and Fool's Bane drop.

Today's the reset, so we'll start all the fun times again tonight.