The past couple of days I have hit level 41 and almost half way till 42 now, and a lot of new instances are being opened up for me. The big confusing part for me is how to get into all these instances! It`s even more frustrating that there is no comprehensive list on how to get into these instances, key notes, or anything- at least not that I could find. So here I am to remedy this dire situation. Just be aware that since I am an asmodian, all of these are for asmodians unless otherwise noted.

Obviously this list is incomplete, since I am only level 41 and not attuned to all the new instances. I`m going to ask the guys over at Blue Gartr for help in filling it out and especially with the notes.

Nochasana Training Grounds
Entrance: Behind Primum Landing
Attunement Quest: An Important Message (25)
Levels: 25-28
Notes: Your first taste of instances. Pretty straight forward. At 25 you will gain half your level by killing everything in there.

Fire Temple
Entrance: Field of Fire, Morheim
Attunement Quest: [Group] The Three Keys (27)
Levels: >27
Notes: Most groups won`t take you if you`re not level 30 or higher. There are several mini-bosses and one mega boss, Kromede the Korrupt. Vile Judge Kromede is a rare HQ version of the former, rumored to have a higher drop rate on gold weapons. Very low drop rate to start with. The mini-bosses drop relatively good gear, however, including the Flame armor sets. At higher level is possible to do it with fewer members.

Sulfer Tree Nest
Location: Sulfer Fortress
Attunement Quest: None
Levels: 30+
Notes: All the mobs are level 35. At lvl 30, it`s possible to do this instance just for exps and APs, as a sort of private exp room. Mobs are all balaur and so drop the balaur scales/hides/horns. You receive a timer once you go through the forcefield. The timer only effects the treasure chests found in the room. These treasure chests hold artifacts and icons which can be turned in at primum landing for APs. There is also a quest beside the entrance you can pick up to kill the enemies in here which rewards an additional exp/ap reward. If you are dead when a mob is killed, however, you will not get credit for the quest.

Right Wing Chamber
Location: Siel`s Eastern Fortress
Attunement Quest: None
Levels: >30
Notes: All the mobs are level 35. At lvl 30, it`s possible to do this instance just for exps and APs, as a sort of private exp room. Mobs are all balaur and so drop the balaur scales/hides/horns. You receive a timer once you go through the forcefield. The timer only effects the treasure chests found in the room. These treasure chests hold artifacts and icons which can be turned in at primum landing for APs. There is also a quest beside the entrance you can pick up to kill the enemies in here which rewards an additional exp/ap reward. If you are dead when a mob is killed, however, you will not get credit for the quest and there are exactly 67 mobs in the room.

Left Wing Chamber
Location: Siel`s Western Fortress
Attunement Quest: None
Levels: >30
Notes: All the mobs are level 35. At lvl 30, it`s possible to do this instance just for exps and APs, as a sort of private exp room. Mobs are all balaur and so drop the balaur scales/hides/horns. You receive a timer once you go through the forcefield. The timer effects the treasure chests found in the rooms found at the end of the six paths. These treasure chests hold artifacts and icons which can be turned in at primum landing for APs. There is also a quest beside the entrance you can pick up to kill the enemies and a boss in here which rewards an additional exp/ap reward. If you are dead when a mob is killed, however, you will not get credit for the quest, so be careful when you fight the boss as she has some pretty nasty attacks that will quickly drop you.

Draupnir Cave
Location: Draupnir Cave, Beluslan
Attunement Quest: None, but must complete all but the last campaign quest in Beluslan.
Levels: >39
Notes: “To have a decent time in Draupnir you will need to be level 46+. To do a speed run, 48+.” (Gamble, BG)

Alquimia Research Center
Location: Alquimia Stronghold, Beluslan
Attunement Quest: A Spy Among the Lepharists (40)
Levels: >40
Notes:

Asteria Chamber
Location: Asteria Fortress, Upper Abyss
Attunement Quest: None
Levels: >40
Notes:

Chamber of Roah
Location:
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Krotan Chamber
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Kysis Chamber
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Miren Chamber
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

(S.S.) Steel Rake (arrghh matey)
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Aetherogenetics Lab
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Indratu Fortress
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Adma Stronghold
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Dredgion
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

Dark Poeta
Location
Attunement Quest
Levels
Notes

So I saw this post over on World Of Raids and thought it was pretty interesting.  Apparently in the next patch Blizzard will be placing an armor “set” that is obtained via drops from the various bosses in the three new 5-man instances.  The word set is in quotes above because it isn’t an official armor set as we’ve come to recognize as it has no set bonuses. The only thing that makes it a set is that together the armor matches. It makes me think back to the old Burning Crusade days where I more often than not looked like a Gnome clown than a Warlock.

I tried to find some more information about these sets, besides the pictures which World of Raids posted yesterday but haven’t had any luck. There are a few new plate pieces on WoW Head’s public test realm section that are not related to the tier 10 gear, however not many people are leaving comments about the items.

If you have any other information about this armor leave a comment and point me in the right direction. I think the plate stuff looks nice, but would really like to see if it’s any better than the stuff I’m currently grabbing from normal Trial of the Crusader runs.

Flicking through all the 3.3 patch goodies on MMO Champion, I couldn’t help but notice something.  Lurking in amongst the names of the weekly raid quests is every priest’s favourite fight. Instructor Razuvious, he the dashing blue armour and the four rather disappointing students. So because I’m sweet and kind, I thought I would share the macro which made my tanking experiences considerably more bearable.

/target Instructor
/petattack
/click PetActionButton6;
/click PetActionButton5;
/raid —-> YOURNAMEHERE has Taunted <—–
/sw 20
/script Stopwatch_Play();
/in 20 /rsay === TAUNT NOW! ===

Obviously you want to change YOURNAMEHERE to your actual character name (I forgot the first time, something which I have never been allowed to forget). Basically it simplifies the fight down to cast mind soothe, cast mindcontrol and hit the macro which pops bone shield and taunts him. Then whilst tanking all you have to do is dps using blood strike and wait for your partner to taunt it off you.

I found it on WoWhead whilst digging through pages of information trying to figure out why even when hit capped my mindcontrol was very temperamental. Which leads me to the other piece of useful advice on the subject, make sure your paladins switch off shadow resistance aura. The last thing you need is your minion gaining 130 shadow resistance just as you mind control him. It tends to lead to squished priests and then everyone else running around blaming you for somehow being incompetent (especially in PuGs).

For excellent WoW Guide Reviews, visit WoWHacked.com

Are you wanting to accomplish something on World of Warcraft and you are afraid that you will not be able to do it by yourself? Do you have a Boss that you would like to master? Well, I do not know if you know this, but it is time for you to start being a loner on WoW. It is time for you to join in with a group of people and form of raid.

When all of you get together, you will be able to take down things that you were never able to take down before. It would be best if you join in on a raid that has more gameplay and less waiting around and chatting.

This way, you will be able to accomplish exactly what you need to accomplish. If you’re searching for a raid, perhaps you should send out a message as you are in Storm Wind announcing that you are in need of a raid. You should also state why you need a raid an what you plan on doing. In no time, you are going to have a raid marching forward to that bad guy.

So I’m a little late, but a busy weekend with Thanksgiving, holiday decorating, and recovery taking up a bunch of my time.  A bunch of folks have already covered this, but I wanted to do a quick recap and summary of what’s coming.  For me, this is a very welcome revamp as not only was the Lone Lands a horrible travel zone but there were some ugly jumps in the Epic line that made it tough to follow.  As a whole, the main areas of focus on the revamp were smoothing out the travel issues, polishing and evening out the epic line, and making the area still challenging but more solo/small fellowship friendly.  I think my favorite part is the change to Weathertop as that was a really fun instance but I’m sure many missed out as they couldn’t find groups.  Now to some of the specifics.

First, for the epic line:

• moving Book 2 earlier in levels such that it flows better with Book 1
• there’s now a travel route from Gandalf to the Ranger Candaith
• Candaith has some quests for you before heading to Weathertop which can either be a solo or group instance.
• After finishing there, you’re sent to the Forsaken Inn to continue the book which is pretty much unchanged from there until Angamaur

The new faction line, the Eglain:

• retroactive such that higher level toons will get credit for quests done
• reputation will be required to finish Epic quests
• At Acquaintance you get a crafting quest which will reward a small bit of coin and an increase in faction with the Eglain.
• At Friend standing, players gain access to a pocket item unique to their class that is of rare quality and requires level 32 to wield.
• At Ally, they have access to the first part of a special jewelry set created with the healer, tank and damage dealer in mind.
• At Kindred, they can purchase the second piece of the jewelry set.
• By doing normal content, you should get you to friend without stepping foot inside of Angamaur

Instances in general:

• challenge mode – “new hard mode” requirements for this will show in quest log and reward  more coin, reputation, and possibly barter coins.  These are daily quests.
• There are also optional encounters which are similar to challenge but usually only reward more coins and reputation, also daily.

Garth Agarwen revamp

• NPCs to barter for items including hope tokens using the barter token drops
• They broke the original GA into 3 sections, so if you’ve done GA before you should have a feel for which areas are which
• Arboretum – The Arboretum boasts one alternate boss creature, four optional objectives, and one challenge against Grimbark. Instance is designed for 4 players and should take between 15 and 40 minutes.
• Barrows – Another “4-man” instance which contains Ivar, another boss, and 4 optional encounters which is expected to take between 35 and 45 minutes.
• Fortress – 6 man instance with boss fights against Edan and Esyld, Vatar, Dúnlang, and of course The Red-maid, Naruhe.   Challenge modes in the space include a survival battle against the Créoth leader Dúnlang, who has captured some Eglain and is attempting to convert them to the service of the Red-maid, and the Red-maid herself.  Expected to take 40-50 minutes.

There also was a general revamp of the zones themselves as they have been broken out into 5 sub-zones, or quest hubs:

• Forsaken Inn changed a bit with some of the NPCs moved
• Central lone-lands hub near Minas Eriol with Hunulf Much and the old mugwort now there instead of the Forsaken Inn.  The goblins and spiders in the area have dropped in difficulty meaning they’re now normals or signatures instead of elites.  Refr Quicksilver stands near a new public instance with some new quests
• Eastern lone-lands – still centered around Ost Guruth, but also some new NPCs in the ruins of Dol Vaeg
• Southern bog – trolls down there are now signature mobs with Eglain just south of OG still sending you down that direction.  Also, 3 new bounty quests from the ruins in the SW area of this zone
• Agamaur – dropped mobs to signatures, more solo friendly.  There’s still a group zone but that’s now in GA proper.

Check out the full post on LOTRO.com.

Aye!

One of these posts?  Now listen closely…

I think I had a hard time adjusting to my level 80 status.  As a follower of the Wowhead forums, I knew I needed level 200 gear to raid and easily run Heroics.

Level 80 Pre-Raiding Hunter Gear, Enchant & Gem 3-in-1 Guide

I didn’t know what to do after and how to get geared for the next step, Raids!  What do I mean?  When each patch comes out Blizzard introduces bigger and badder raids.  Starting from Naxxramas, to everything in between, then all the way to Ulduar.

I am a late bloomer when it comes to Wow.  I didn’t start during Vanilla.  I burned my levels through Outland never really experiencing Outland instances. I never experienced any Outland raids.  I got to Northend maybe a few weeks after the WotLK expansion came out and was behind veteran players in my guild at the time.  Hail to the Sentinels of Dalvengyr!

For now I decided to tell you what I think, found out, and learned during my time period of being a NOOB level 80 Hunter.

To get geared without having my fellow hunter’s go to everything before and between Naxx and Ulduar I say unto thee:

Emblem of Conquest

Yes click the freaking link.  After you get few crafted 200 level pieces or gear from regular instances, run Heroics and get the emblems to get the gear.  Start with the Crown of the Wayward Protector and then purchase Breastplate of the Wayward Protector.  Turn them in at the Langrom’s Leather and Links vendor in Dalaran.  Follow with the other pieces of gear like the leggings and the gloves.

Do you know of the Heroic Dailies?  Go to the Violet Hold in Dalaran and grab them.  Do them everyday.

Now here is the mistake I made.  Do not go to the Emblem currency trader in the sewers to trade whatever Emblems of Triumph you get from the daily just so you get the gear from the Conquest badges faster.  When 3.3 hits the Triumph gears will be much easier to get but for now don’t trade them in.  As you can see the items and gear you can get from Triumph gear is better than the ones from Conquest gear.  You can get more Emblems of Triumph by running or pugging raids start with 10 mans.

If you are thinking to yourself, “I didn’t know that.”  You’re welcome Noob.  Now pat yourself on the back.  You just joined Guntitan’s new guild called the Young Guns.  Clever huh?

Just to show you how important Triumph gear is to Conquest gear or anything else listen to this example:

Yes I’ve been running Heroics. I was in Ulduar 10 with my guild today and something good for Hunters dropped.  There were 2 hunters in this run.  Me and someone else named Forcemonkey.

Ironaya’s Discarded Mantle dropped but the other hunter had shoulders from triumph badges.  I rolled a 1.  Yes a freaking 1.  A one I tell you.  He didn’t roll and someone who was goofing off rolled.  I panicked.  In vent I kept saying I want them so bad.  The druid couldn’t use it.  I got them with a roll of O-N-E.  If Forcemonkey didn’t have better gear he would of rolled and beat my roll. I was lucky he knew what he was doing.  Now don’t give up those Emblems of Triumph, do some Heroics and the Heroic dailies, and go pug some raids.

‘Til next time…

! Guntitan

P.S.

Thanks Urburning for showing me the way.

As we announced some time ago we are running the series about  instances on Crogges Server. The first episode tells about dungeon from Hellfire Citadel – Hellfire Ramparts, the first instance situated in Outland.

Trash mobs

As soon as we started the Fel Orc massacre on Citadel walls, we were positively surprised that the mobs actually used some basic skills like shouts or disarming. They also tried to run away in fear when low on health. That didn’t help them much though. The first-mob-impression was nice, but then it fell apart while fighting Bonechewer Beastmaster. As soon as you aggro the guy, he spawns 4 hounds in the first 4 seconds of the fight – sure, it’s not a problem for a group of 70s, but basically Ramparts are tuned for 60s, and that means it’s a killer script for the group. The mob should spawn the dogs after a certain amount of time, giving a chance to kill him without additional difficulties. Beside these redskins the trash killing looks pretty nice throughout the whole instance.

Now let us look at the boss encounters..

The abilites of the boss himself seem nice, he does a knockback and debuffs the tank, not sure about charging players. The biggest (and funniest) issue with this guy is when his hp reaches 50%. Then he shouts for his 2 adds to heal him, but guess what – his adds are on a break! They stand at the end of the road, not even thinking about following their master. Instead of yelling ‘Heal me! QUICKLY!’, Gargolmar should scream ‘WTF?!~!’. This fight should be easy, but without the adds it’s an encounter you manage to do while sleeping. The adds could at least patrol the same way behind the boss.

This seems like the best scripted boss in the dungeon, casting shadow bolts at the players, summoning felhounds and casting dots at his victims. The only thing we didn’t notice here was his ability to throw people up and hang them in mid-air, but that does not make the fight tedious. Nice work done here!

This boss is a synonym of a scripting failure! The fight should start with aggroing the 2 mobs that stand at the bridge to the ramp, it did not aggro the boss. Shared aggro doesn’t need commenting – we just killed them and got ready for the boss. First thing you can say about Vazruden is that he must have cloned himself – one stands in the center of the platform, another one is riding Nazan in the air.. Then we noticed the Reinforced Fel Iron Chest that contains the boss loot after killing him, it was lootable without even starting the fight. But we are happy that it contains loot that wasn’t accessible in the past after opening the chest. We killed Vazruden standing on the ground, so it was time to take down the royal air force. As soon as we aggroed Nazan, we found out that he spawns a copy of his master every 2 seconds – FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, FAIL, each ‘fail’ responsible for each multiplication of the boss. Those 2 are clearly really hard, if not impossible to kill for a group of 60s.

Summary

Hellfire Ramparts is the very first Outland instance that levels 60 will visit after running through Dark Portal. Hungry for loot players may have serious problems with last boss which makes this instance difficult if you don’t have 70s friends ready for help. The whole impression from the dungeon is nice: running in fear and sometimes yelling thrash mobs, bosses using skills and ‘nearly’ all fair encounters. However some serious mistakes have been done – last boss should be rescripted to give some more chances for early 60s players.

all images (c) rebecca gillespie

Earlier, I read this post over at Restokin. As much as I hate killing raid trash, I agree with her.  Raid instances need to have trash mobs.

ToC is entirely too quick and it just doesn’t have that epic “feel” that some of the older instances had.  I guess the equivalent to trash in there is the lengthy introduction each encounter gets.

Take a look at all the BC era raid instances.  Each of those instances had way too much trash, but at least they provided fairly nice rewards and additional challenges.  Those instances definitely felt more epic than ToC does.

Like Lissanna, I think there needs to be a happy medium.  Perhaps somewhere between ToC and Freya.  For the most part, I think Ulduar seems pretty reasonable.

If nothing else, trash pulls allow your raid time to socialize and take needed breaks between boss fights.  I think this is important for guilds.

Met Dropbox is online en lokaal 2Gb beschikbaar en werkt eigenlijk als een online USB-stick, maar wat nu als je meer accounts hebt of meer ruimte nodig hebt maar geen zin hebt om te betalen? :

Origineel artikel hier: http://lifehacker.com/5399069/from-the-tips-box-multiple-dropbox-accounts-twitter-notes-and-cloud-billing/

Artikel:

Running Multiple Dropbox Instances

Tino shows us a workaround to have multiple Dropbox accounts running at once:

Dropbox client does not allow you to run multiple instances concurrently but you can get around with this issue by running it as different Windows User Accounts. With a little help of Dropboxen by Dale H, you can easily run multiple instances of Dropbox client concurrently.

Get a copy of Dropboxen here if you haven’t. You need to unzip the files into your Dropbox installation folder. The default installation folder is C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin\ or C:\Program Files\Dropbox\ depending on your OS.

You will need to edit the file Dropboxen.xml but before doing that, you need to create a Windows User Account for each Dropbox account that you will be using (it has to be an Administrator account, not Standard User). For Windows XP, go to Control Panel > User Account > Create a new account, remember to set a password for your account. For Windows Vista or 7, go to Control Panel > User Accounts and Family Safety > Add or remove user accounts, remember to set a password for your account. You will need to login to your new account and install Dropbox client, do this for every single User account. After you’re done with creating User Accounts and installations, log off and switch back to your main account. Let’s edit Dropboxen.xml, you can open it with any text-editor:

Dropboxen.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<accounts>
<account username="(windows user account name)" password="(windows user account password)" />
<account username="(windows user account name 2)" password="(windows user account password 2)" />
</accounts>
</root>

Now you need to fill in your user accounts and passwords. This is what my Dropboxen.xml looks like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<accounts>
<account username="TinoTK" password="somepassword" />
<account username="Dropbox1" password="pass1" />
<account username="Dropbox2" password="pass2" />
</accounts>
</root>

Now go ahead and click on Dropboxen.exe to start Dropbox client again, there should be multiple instances of Dropbox client according to how many accounts you put in Dropboxen.xml. Now you can use multiple Dropbox accounts at the same time. The last thing you need to do is create a shortcut for Dropboxen.exe in your Startup folder.

That’s what she said.

Wait. What?

I’m talking about the Outlands.

That’s right, my little healbot of a priest made the jump through the portal to the Outlands this weekend, thankfully in some very good company.

Not counting my DK, who’s spent all of about 15 minutes in the Outlands, this is only my second character to visit the floating continent.

It was big and it was brutal when I went through on my mage, but this time it seems even bigger and scarier.

Probably has something to do with the fact that my offensive capabilities are slim to none unless you count running behind the guy in plate.

One of my favorite parts of being in the Outlands, especially Hellfire Peninsula, it that everything looks like a postcard or desktop/screensaver.

Sure is a purty place to die.

Then of course, there’s always the first glimpse of Fel Reaver, with the shaking screen.

And my response to Fel Reaver:

We get a couple quests under our belts and then Wonderfulretpally decides that it’s time to tackle Ramps.

Can we just try to take on Fel Reaver instead?

Might be less deathy.

The last instance I healed was Sunken Temple and that was with a retarded level 60 warrior trying to tank it in Battle Stance and dual wielding 2-handers.

And a brain damaged fire-spec mage that thought running around casting Dragon’s Breath was a good idea.

I get jittery when I get back into PvP. Stomach tightens up, hands might shake a little, it takes me a few arena matches or BGs to loosen up and remember what the hell I’m doing.

Apparently a very similar thing happens when I get ready to heal, just without the shaking.

We’ve got me for healing, BMhunter, and Retpally. We’re all 59 and 60. We immediately pick up a 65 mage out of LFG.

A mage with a name referencing pot.

I notice he’s got a fire buff on him, Blazing Speed. Doooooom!

I tell my cohorts that I have a bad feeling about this mage. Blazing Speed is generally considered to be more of a PvP talent.

I make a mental bet with myself that he also has Dragon’s Breath and Blastwave.

It takes another 15 minutes or so to find a tank.

Never mind that there’s a gabillion death knights and a handful of warriors in the zone – but no tanks.

We finally get a DK that admits they’re not a very good tank but is willing to give it a go.

Zone in and buff up.

Well. Mostly buff up.

I’ve given out my buffs.

Hello, mage? Can i haz int pl0x?

Never did offer food/water. Jerk.

(Even when it was a pain in the ass to conjure stacks of food and water, I did it.)

Party buffs for a priest is still kinda mana intensive for me so I plop down to get some mana back.

And next thing I know, the mage is casting Pyroblast at a mob down on the bridge.

We got about 6 pulls in before we could convince the mage to stop going nuts.

We had to ask him to quit running into the group and doing Blastwave because he was knocking mobs from one group into the next and chain-aggroing.

(Note to self, I won the bet!)

It took a wipe to do it, but he did calm down for about 10 minutes.

After that, he seemed to have forgotten about the importance of not pulling aggro and started going apeshit again.

Thank god Pyroblast has such a long cast time on it, otherwise the tank never would have had time to get into position.

We finished the instance without too much more hassle.

Retpally thanked everyone for the run and gently chided the mage for making it more difficult than it needed to be.

The mage responded to the effect of, “what are you talking about? my damage was what got us through that!”

I informed him flat out that he pulled way too much aggro and took far too much damage in there. (Oh, and his damage was nothing to write home about, I think the pally beat him and was 5 levels lower.)

His response?

cya, Ima smoke more bud

You go do that and never darken my pug again.

Most of my overhealing was from the Renews I was tossing to keep people topped off.

My mana wasn’t too bad off, I only sat to drink once or twice.

Not because I only needed/wanted to drink once or twice, but because the tank that says they normally run a healer paid zero attention to my mana. I thought people that played healers knew to keep an eye on the healer’s mana when they switch to a tank role?

Thankfully, I’m twinked out and had close to 6k mana with Arcane Intellect (when we finally got the mage to cast it).

Turning in the quests from Ramps bumped me up to 60, happy day!

ZOMG.

Being able to fly in HFP is, like, the coolest thing EVER!

We went back to questing and then got in line for Blood Furnace when we got those quests.

This time we picked up another one of our friends on his alt and took Spriest with us instead of that dumbshit mage.

Got another DK tank and we’re off.

Enter the instance and the first thing they say?

I hate tanking

Eeeeeeeeek.

He actually did really well and we only had one death in the run (sorry Retpally!), but it was either the tank or the DPS standing on the bombs.

I needed to test my Resurrect anyway.

Had more overhealing that run, but mana was about the same. I did have to spend more GCDs shielding the pally since he liked to tap dance on the explosives.

Anyway, we quested some more and had to return to Orgrimmar to tell Thrall about all these orcs out here that are untainted.

Apparently he forgot since the time I swung by on my mage and told him, but hey, he’s a busy Warchief.

About this time the pally has to take a quick break so we wait for him at the Dark Portal and put on a show.

We even had a rabid fan base!

They were a little overzealous in asking for our autographs however.

(That’s me as the Spirit of Redemption there. I get nice legs and a rack when I die.)

Being true performers, we ran back and started again.

And they killed us again!

We canceled the rest of the performance as the paladin was back so we jumped naked through the portal.

…

2 Outland’s instances down with only 1 wipe and 1 death.

There was nothing I could have done about the wipe other than insist the idiot mage had been booted right from the first jackass pull.

The pally’s death… I’m not sure what I could have done. The tank was taking a crap ton of damage and I don’t know why.

I tried keeping shields up on both of them, but something was just tearing through them. (My guess is the bombs.)

Just seemed like I didn’t have enough GCDs to get stuff done.

By the second run, I wasn’t feeling near as sick to my stomach about healing. Hopefully next time I won’t feel bad at all.

I healed ToC

I finally reached 78 and the instance options opened above me.

• Utgarde Pinnacle
• Culling of Stratholme
• Occulus
• Halls of Lightning

and…

• CoT

I signed up for a few of them, ran a couple of them just fine, but I wasn’t going to sign up to heal CoT.

Can I heal Normal ToC after being 78 for 10 minutes?

I checked with my mates:

You think I can heal normal ToC?

No bloody way mate, it’s hard!

So I stayed away from ToC in the LFG interface.

Until...

Vikingmetal came online and offered to run a few instances. I told him those instances I thought I would be OK with, which didn’t include ToC.

Next thing I know, the group is formed and I ask where we are going…

ToC

We survived…

Well actually we didn’t. We wiped once, there we a couple of additional misc deaths, but the Black Knight went down.

Mind you, the only one left standing was Viking, but I had managed to keep the group up long enough for him to solo the Black Knight to death.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was done. I had done it.

Feeling a little less unsure I signed up again. This time I was grabbed by a well geared and experienced 80 Tankadin.

We survived (ok, there may have been a wipe in there somewhere, but we won’t talk about that). I even got complimented for healing well above my gear… Nice!

One nub = a Wipe

Third time not so lucky. I grabbed Viking as he was heading off to bed. Unfortunately more of us went down than mobs (no, not bosses, mobs).

In an encounter similar to Rhii’s, we just couldn’t pull it off.

Like Rhii, I suspect that it was all the fault of one party member. Sure I am being unfair, but it couldn’t have been my fault.

This warrior has been plaguing me since Maruadon. Ever since he tried to tank the slimes and died. Then quit the group in a rage when I kite tanked 3 of them and killed them by myself while he abused the healer. If I wanted to tank… He was going.

Nub!

Ironically, nub is a badge of honor for him and even forms a part of his name… I need the Namescore addon!

I have mistakenly invited him to groups since. One VH run we got through by the skin of my totems, but he was always the 1st to die.

Problem is he doesn’t like to die alone.

Anyway he was there for the fail ToC and constantly apologizing for his screw ups.

While he may not have been directly responsible for our ultimate fail, I think he all wore us down enough that we were susceptible to the Black Knight’s plague.

Postscript:

I’ve been 80 for a few days now.

I am definitely not going to heal HToC…

I will DPS it of course…

Well until we wiped 4 times and the Healadin suggests a change of tactics.. he will Tank, I will heal…

Mmmm, I warn him it isn’t likely to happen, but since we are saved it’s worth one more go…

End result…

We took the Black Knight down, only one death… ME! But late enough that they could finish him off.

Gnomer and Out, Squidly and Stout!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/11/16/i-did-what-i-couldnt-do/

So I guess I should put a pink ribbon on my blog – a new alt is born! A series of factors came together in her creation:

1. I’ve never had a hunter – or rather, my top hunter is a lvl 30-something dorf (what the hell was I thinking?)
2. I’ve had the itch to try out the revamped instances – you know, the ones where the end mobs is not 11 levels higher than the starting one (hello Uldaman), and when named mobs drop blues, not white items (hello RFC)
3. I’ve been curious about starting a character on a new server – I love Feathermoon to death, and it will probably be my home for a very long time still. But it’s nice sometimes how things work on a different server.
4. A friend of mine told me he was considering transferring severs, because he was unhappy with they way his guild was going these days (and I’ll leave it at that, because I’m not sure he wants his plans to be known, so he shall remain anonymous). So he had transferred a lvl 80 alt to Gurubashi – and while it’s nice to start afresh, it’s also nice to have a lvl 80 person as a last-minute support (from a gold loan to an instance run)

I alternated between Troll and Blood Elf hunter – mostly because the starting zones for Blood Elves are about 1000x better than Durotar-Barrens. In the end, I decided I could withstand Barrens – and it would be a good occasion to relive them before Wrath. So a couple of gaming sessions, my Troll Huntress is now lvl 19, and has run Ragefire Chasm.

Gurubashi is a lot more active than Feathermoon – but I’m not sure that’s a good thing. The fact that Trade is monopolised by people LFG or LFM is a bit of a drag – and chat scrolls up at amazing speeds, because everyone seems to feel the need to repeat their request four times at least (and in caps, ça va sans dir!). The economy is completely screwed: I’m glad I decided to go the safe route, and get two gathering professions. Peacebloom is going for 1.5g a stack, Silverleaf is at 2g and Light Leather is around 2-2.5g. The plus side is that at lvl 20 I managed to already make a fair bit of money – about 20g, which means I could buy bags (10-slots, still), the first glyph… Just to give you an idea of the state of the economy: 6-slot bags (available from vendors for 45s) were sold for 2-3g.

At lvl 14 I started looking for a group for Ragefire Chasm, and this was kinda fun. Not many people in the LFG tool (what a surprise!) and mostly DPS, so I did a /who 13-16 and whispered all possible tanks. Given that at that level we have about 3-4 talent points in total, I would have though anyone would be interested in coming. Boy was I surprised! Aside from the usual “not interested” (fair enough), and no replies from about 50% of the people, I also got

• “I don’t have a shield” – now this really boggles me: I’m the anal person who levelled his druid as feral but with a resto set in my bags, always. But geez – is it really too hard keeping ONE shield in your bags??
• 2 lvl 30s inviting me to a group and then asking me for silvers for a run through – whatever gave you the impression I was interested in that??
• I did get a “shut up noob, you’re covering my LFG requests” – I kinda doubts the people interested in the daily Heroics are the same interested in RFC….

All in all, I’m enjoying the experience – it’s certainly nice to see a character progress through levels that quick, and to learn the dynamics of a new class is always fun. Now, I just need some of my friends to join me on Gurubashi Horde!

Literally.

I love this offhand, first time I’ve ever had one which isn’t either some dusty old tome or a random body part. Here’s to hoping that Icecrown continues the unusual offhand trend. Besides a perpetually full cup has to make you the life and soul of the post raid party, hope that’s something tasty like bitter cactus cider or a good dalaran white pouring out of it.

Its been a busy and interesting week. We finally got enough people online and in the same place whilst the server stopped lagging enough to kill Anub’arak 25 heroic mode. That has to be the most horrendous and hateful fight ever conceived to heal. When he finally died, my hands were shaking so badly that I stopped healing my mark with penetrating cold, which would have been fine if it wasn’t me. Dying three seconds after the boss is embarrassing.

• Disc is definitely better than Holy here.
• We ran with 6 healers, 2 paladins, 2 druids, 1 shaman and 1 disc priest which meant than in phase 3, once the marks where handed out, we had one healer left who was concentrating on the tanks/throwing out downranked rejuvs on people looking dangerously close to death.
• My job fun as it was, was to keep shields on both tanks (MT and OT –  actually a fight where the OT is far more important than the MT eek), keep up my mark in phase 3 and throw shields on our 4 rogues whenever their health dipped really low. That’s a lot of global cooldowns when your hands are shaking.
• Most importantly get GridStatusRaidIcons, which places a mark on anyone with a debuff, allowing you to assign raid marks for healing penetrating colds easily. However, make sure you have it turned off the rest of the time as annoying really doesn’t do it full justice on most fights.

In other news, I want to complain. Look at the names of the tier 10 sets, ScourgeLord for deathknights, Ymirjar Lord’s for warriors, Blood Mage and Frost Witch… and what do priests get. Oh look we are wearing the Crimson Acolyte’s Raiment.

“The word acolyte is derived from the Greek word akolouthos, meaning companion, attendant, or helper.”

Wonderful, everyone else gets evocative powerful sounding sets but even the name of our gear reinforces the fact that we are “standing at the back in our sissy robes”.  Although the whole set has a Disney feel to it in my opinion (possibly caused by the really ugly stitching), think I’m going to spend most of Icecrown dancing around with my magic broom singing cheerful songs and refusing any crunchy apples if offered by a warlock wearing that witches hat. Its just too big a risk, my guild can only muster two dwarves, Dopey and Grumpy and I wouldn’t trust them to look after me. The other thing that bugs me slightly is, shouldn’t the raiment of the Crimson Acolyte be well, crimson? Definitely not pastel blue, neon green, orange with pink bits or purple and yellow. Thank Elune that I’m a female Nightelf and thus look good in everything.

So only raiding for 2 fun packed nights a week means more time for random running around the world, alts and working on achievements. Yay. Although I’m looking forward to Icecrown I rather hope its at least 4 weeks away.

I stand on the rim.

Teetering.

An unanticipated breeze could send me over the edge.

Or at least that’s how most of last night felt.

…

We raid Wednesdays and Thursdays.

According to the calendar, anyway.

Something came up for our MT and two of our core healers on Wednesday. And some DPS was missing.

No problem, we’ll just scrape up some guild mates and do VoA and Ony as neither of those raids are really “progression” anymore.

We did very well against Ony, netting the whole group:

The secret to She Deep Breaths More is to just bring her down in phase 2 so WTF fast that she doesn’t have time to think about breathing. We took her breath away. Haha.

Phase 2 went so fast we only had 1 spawn of whelps and the big guy.

Oh, and our Ony tank DCed right after she landed.

Thankfully he made it back in time to get the achievements.

I think it’s safe to say that we’ve got Ony pretty well covered now – a far cry from the first couple attempts where we were 3-healing with 2 shaman in the raid for the fear totems.

One of our tanks sounded like he was dying so we called it a night (a successful one at that, people got some gear!).

…

Last night I was out the 2 healers again. And some DPS.

Start pulling people in again.

This is actually a blessing in disguise for at least one guild mate that just needs the opportunity to strut his stuff and show he’s progression-worthy.

It’s still a fucking nightmare for me getting a gabillion tells and watching guild/officer chat be all clogged with variations of “so are we raiding tonight?”

We hit up normal ToCr with 2 healers, when we normally go with 3.

We had a couple bumpy spots and a wipe (or 3 on the faction champs) but we pulled through and got the full clear.

So here’s where the fail, on my part, enters.

I never particularly wanted to lead raids.

I find it stressful. Mostly because I want to trust everyone to do their job, but forget that maybe we have a different comp and have members that haven’t run the content to death like some of us.

So I remember to get the flasks out of the guild bank.

I even hand out the flasks to the appropriate people.

I then completely and totally forget to actually click the little icon to make me drink one.

Right before Anub when someone mentions their flask is low, I realize that I never took one.

Well that would explain part of why I’m sucking on the meters.

I’m so used to trusting the healers to work it out amongst themselves that I forgot we had a different healing comp.

They figured it out.

The tanks thankfully are smart enough to discuss things between themselves.

I forgot that we didn’t have our normal shaman in the group.

So I forgot to tell him when to lust.

Right when the tanks engaged the Twins I realized I didn’t switch to my Incanter’s Absorption spec.

I’ve never remembered to switch for that fight – the WHOLE REASON I have that spec is for that fight.

I realized at the start of the Anub fight that my Frost Sphere macro was fucked up.

But when it didn’t work the first time, I froze, totally confused.

(Turns out I grabbed the wrong icon off of the macro page, no idea why I had another one that looked similar with an almost identical name.)

Thankfully the add tank put it together pretty quick that something was wrong and death gripped a sphere down.

Overall, my damage for the night was the worst I think it’s been in a long time.

I felt really bad looking at the parse after I loaded it.

Not being flasked hurt a little, but I think I was just off my game.

My positioning on a lot of the fights was awkward.

I was trying to mark the snobolds as they came out and was finding it hard to mark and call it in vent out at the same time – the equivalent of walking and chewing gum I suppose.

During the faction champion fight I was trying to call out the next target and would space on colors and symbols. Just kill the one I want you to kill dammit! Don’t ask me which one, just do it!

And every time I goofed, it made me that much more sluggish to respond to the next situation.

It was just an awkward night for me.

…

I did redeem myself slightly in a 25-man VoA where Koralon again refused to drop my pants.

I’m not even asking for dinner and a movie first, just drop my fucking pants already!

For some unknown reason I decided to further compound my stress for the evening by doing the massive gear upgrade I’ve been planning.

It probably had to do with Lightbane Focus dropping, making it possible for me to pull out the Sunreaver Disciple Blade I had tucked away in the bank.

I’ve been hoarding emblems, hoping to get my pants out of VoA and Crusader Orbs cheap off the AH.

Made a list of every piece that I should be wearing, the gems, and the enchants.

Fuck, I still need that stupid fucking Abyssal Rune out of normal 5-man Trial. Fuck me. I’ll upgrade without it and farm it later. Trinkets are easy enough to switch out.

I need 13 gems just for my sockets and another 3 for the bracers.

My hubby has extra emblems so bought orbs for me and I bought them off him. He also had extra heroism tokens so got me several of the gems I needed and cut them.

(I need to think of something to get him to pay him back, any clever ideas?)

Get my new head arcanum from the Kirin Tor QM.

Fly out to Storm Peaks and get a new shoulder inscription.

Make my Merlin’s Robe.

Make my Bejewled Wizard’s Bracers.

Get my Talisman of Resurgence (yes, I broke down and got it and I’m going to hate it but have already macroed it to my other CDs).

Get my Band of the Invoker.

Get my T9 helm and PANTS since Koralon seems to be frigid.

Get everything gemmed up.

Get everything enchanted.

Realize that I’m a fucking idiot and did not get new shoulders so have a Greater Inscription of the Storm for no reason and there is no same-cost buy back on that item so it’s going to sit in my bank until it becomes BoA or I get T10 shoulders.

The funny thing is, I switched out 9 pieces of gear (and regemmed everything), yet you can only see the change in 2 pieces – 3 if you look closely at my feet.

I also had to respec to regain my missing hit rating (and reduce mana cost on spells again).

So I’m standing at the trainer and merrily plugging my points back in where they should go… and have 2 extra points.

I have no idea where they are supposed to go.

Fuck it.

I can never remember to switch to the IA spec, let’s toss a point in that for giggles and one into the pushback talent and call it good.

My second spec will probably become a variant of the Arcane Shatter spec that I used to use when I did arena and that is experiencing a revival by Rip over at Critical QQ.

I’m sure my spec is missing something important somewhere, but it’s going to have to do for now.

Here are some before and after stat shots:

Before

And…

After

I gained a little over 200 spell power and 2600 mana. Took it in the shorts on mana regen though. Need that stupid Abyssal Rune trinket to get the rest of my haste and I’ll be pretty good for a while.

Now I get to wait a whole ‘nother week before I can *hopefully* get this gear broken in proper in a raid. Maybe I’ll even remember to flask up.

And my new offhand is the shrunken head of a KISS band member.

I might link all the items later. Right now it’s late and I have failed to get to bed at a decent time.

Chilling at the entrance to SFK

Yesterday was fun. First off it was Halloween, so I got to hand out candy to adorable small children dressed in silly costumes. Second of all I joined my first guild and they took me on my first instance!

Yes I’m excited about running Shadow Fang Keep.

Shush I’m a newbie don’t judge me.

Anyway, a few guildies and I gathered up at SFK and watched a level 80 Paladin decimate everything in the zone. It was neat! Unfortunately the final boss dropped his darn dagger instead of robes, but oh well. I hope I’ll get to do more instances in the future.  Although I’m sure they’re a tad more terrifying when you don’t have a level 80 leading you through…

Today was slightly less eventuful. I got to level 24 and then tried to find a good place to level. I find the quests in Hillsbrad annoying, and I seem to still be too low level for Ashenvale. So the solution?

Just barely holding on here...

Glitch myself into a Zep and head to Org! Next stop Stonetalon Mountains, and hopefully level 25!

What is sovereignty and does anyone still have any?

An asterisk (*) indicates a correct answer.

1. Entities are usually verbs. True or False?
True
False (*)

2. All of the following would be instances of the entity PERSON except which?
David Jones
Male (*)
Angelina Rosalie
Grace Abinajam

3. In the following statements, find two examples of ENTITY: Instance. (Choose Two)
DAIRY PRODUCT: cow (*)
VEGETABLE: grows
BOOK: Biography of Mahatma Gandhi (*)
TRAIN: runs

4. A/an _________ is a piece of information that in some way describes an entity. It is a property of the entity and it quantifies, qualifies, classifies or specifies the entity.
ERD
Process
Table
Attribute (*)

5. An entity may have which of the following?
experiences
instances (*)
tables
none of the above

6. In a physical data model, an attribute is represented as a/an
Column (*)
Row
Instance
Foreign Key

7. Which of the following entities most likely contains invalid attributes?
Entity: Home. Attributes: Number of Bedrooms, Owner, Address, Date Built
Entity: Pet. Attributes: Name, Birthdate, Owner
Entity: Car. Attributes: Owner Occupation, Owner Salary, Speed (*)
Entity: Mother. Attributes: Name, Birthdate, Occupation, Salary

8. The word “Volatile” means….
Changing constantly; unstable (*)
Static; unlikely to change
Large quantity
Limited quantity

9. Some of the following could be attributes of an ENTITY called PERSON. Select the incorrect attributes for PERSON. (Choose Two)
Age
Freddy Wilson (*)
Name
Priya Hansenna (*)

10. Which of the following statements about attributes are true? (Choose Two)
They describe, qualify, quantify, classify, or specify an entity. (*)
They are often adjectives.
They have a data type such as a number or character string. (*)
They must be single valued unless they belong to more than one entity.

11. Unique Identifiers….
distinguish one entity from another
distinguish one instance of an entity from all other instances of that entity (*)
distinguish all entities in a database
distinguishes nothing

12. What is the purpose of a Unique Identifier?
To uniquely determine a table and columns within that table.
To identify a specific row within a table, using one or more columns and/or foreign keys.
Create an entity that is unlike any other entity aside from itself.
To identify one unique instance of an entity, by using one or more attributes and/or relationships. (*)

Finally home from my business trip. Did the horseman, but he dropped crap so I still need one more plate helmet. One a positive note I will probably get 58 emblems today, which means a nice purple BP for everyone I also finished UK again this morning, giving me the last pair of the epic legs. Since I’m not working today my plan is to finish what I can of Gundrak, do CoT strat (since it’s heroic daily) and with some luck, actually have time to try an instance I haven’t done yet!

Oh yeah, I installed another 6gig ram into my pc, made a huge difference, especially in Dalaran. Now I just need a SSD.