The following post isn’t necessarily Druid related, but it does discuss a situation that some of us may have found ourselves in.

Close to where I live, it was discovered that a local High School has been offering improper benefits to families (Housing, Money, etc.) so that their athletically talented children would play on their football team.  The investigation stated that this has been going on for several years.  Obviously, this is a huge no no in high school sports.

The difficult issue facing the board that governs high school football is how to punish their program.  In this particular instance, coaches and a few other people were suspended without pay for various amounts of time.  However, there were absolutely no sanctions against the current team.  The board decided it was not fair to punish the other players that did not receive benefits.  I would argue that by virtue of wins, all of their players benefited from the unscrupulous actions described above.

I say all of that because I had a WoW situation that was similar.

In one of my previous guilds, we ran Zul’Aman weekly.  It eventually became fairly widespread news that one of the harder fights (Hex Lord Malacrass) in the instance had a bug that you could exploit to make the fight much easier.

For those of you unfamiliar with this fight, you basically fight the boss and 4 mean random adds that each have various unique attacks.  The nature of the bug/exploit was that through clever use of ice traps you could trigger the event without the boss’ adds.  This made the fight infinitely easier.

Here is the situation I was faced with.

After wiping a couple times to Hex Lord, a person in a leadership position of the guild decided that we were going to use the bug described above.  After stating my total disgust with that decision, I helped them kill Hex Lord.

In retrospect, I probably should have left whenever our “leader” decided we were going to cheat.  However, there were a couple reasons that I decided to stay.

1. The person that made the decision was a high ranking officer in the guild
2. Leaving would have meant the end of the raid and I would have felt that I let the team down.

Even though I did not agree with our “leader’s” decision, I still participated and benefited from it.

In closing, I present a few questions that I would love to hear your comments about.

• Do you consider using a bug to your advantage to be wrong?
• Do you consider the situation above to be a bannable or suspendable offense?
• If any punishment is handed out, should everyone get the same punishment or should the person in leadership get a more severe penalty?
• What would you have done?

I look forward to reading your comments.

The instance group was short a gnome on Saturday night, so while we were all sitting outside the Halls of Stone, that was obviously not going to be our destination as a four person group.

Original Target - Halls of Stone

The four of us were:

76 Warrior – Earlthecat
78 Priest – Skronk
78 Mage – Ula
78 Paladin – Vikund

And we needed something to do.

For a short term solution we decided to head back to the Caverns of Time and hit the heroic version of opening of the Dark Portal.  We did the regular version a few weeks back and figured we could handle the heroic version with this group.

Fortunately there is a portal from Dalaran to the Caverns of Time, so we were able to get from Ulduar to the instance pretty quickly.

Earl picked up the quests and away we went.  Again, another week without a delay getting an instance.  Very nice.

The routine was the same as before, and since Earl had done Violet Hold with us it was easy to explain what was going to happen.

Zip, bang, an 18 portal round and we had the achievement, Earl getting a double, both the regular and the heroic.

This time we were ready for the orcs to stream through the portal.  Last time we were ready to light them up.  This time we just waved.

Orcs through the portal

I then demonstrated to Earl that there wasn’t any going through the portal for us.  If you try to follow the orcs back through the portal, you just end up on the ground on the other side.

Nothing around back for us

And that wrapped up that for us, leaving ample time for other adventures.

So we thought about what we ought to try next.

We had talked about Zul’Aman previously, there being a quest as part of it that yields a 20 slot bag.  We could all go for that.  So Ula opened a portal to Ironforge for the four of us, then we flew off to the Ghostlands to hit Zul’Aman.

Once there we picked up the quest for the bag and headed in.

There we found an NPC named Harrison Jones.  I had just run into him in Grizzly Hills with my hunter the other day so was a bit surprised to see him.  WoW does have its share of recurring characters.

We spoke to Harrison and he lead us over to a gong that he explained would open the inner doors to the instance if only he could get at least five people to help him sound it.

Five people.  If only.

Harrison Jones needs help banging the gong

Well, we tried banging the gong with just the four of us in case they changed that rule, but nothing appeared to happen.  Our attempt at Zul’Aman was thwarted.

So suggestions were called for once again.  This time Karazhan came up.

A mage portal to Stormwind, a flight to Darkshire, and then a ride through Deadwind Pass got us to the gates of Karazhan.

Which were locked.

Locked!

Well, a quick look through WoW Wiki indicated that getting the key to the place was a little more involved than we were expecting.

That wasn’t going to fly.

Again we began discussing options.  What could we do that was fun, interesting, new (for us, at least), and would possibly grant an achievement?

The perfect idea came up.  A plan was hatched.  Another mage portal was opened.  We were heading off for something different.

But I’ve got nothing else on tap for this week, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what it is.

Since the PvP tip of the days were so popular, I figured I would try the same thing with raiding.  Granted, these tips will be a little more usefull than the PvP tips were.  If you have any raid specific questions, please let me know and I will try to cover them in future Raiding Tips o’ the Day.

Instance: Zul’Aman

Boss: Hex Lord Malacrass

Tip: During this fight, the Hex Lord will channel Spirit Bolts causing large amount of raid wide damage.  Just before he starts channelling cast earth shield on yourself.  Not only will this reduce the amount of spell push back you get while you are trying to cast chain heal, but you get the added bonus of the healing proc off of earth shield allowing you to focus on healing others rather than yourself.

Yep, me and Cablin managed to get Zul’Aman done and dusted this evening! I’d already gone through, but Cab still had to so it was fun having a good old run around in there. I’m not that experienced with the bosses, but we still managed to get there and get Zul’Jin down! One of our warrior tanks got some heavy duty gear also – pointless when Wrath of the Lich King is around the corner but still very satisfying.

No Mojo. Boo. He’s an awesome mini pet that would be welcome in my army collection.

I’m so comfortable in <Apollyon> – the players are friendly and are very good at what they do. I know in Wrath the guild is going to blossom, and I want to be a part of that – as well as Cablin, of course. We actually went into SSC last night too, nothing of real interest dropped aside from a nice offspec tanking staff for Cab; [Wildfury Greatstaff] (link).

Meaghs’ mom and sister were in town for the weekend to attend the Portland Bridal Show.  They stayed with us on Friday and Saturday night and then attended the show most of Saturday prior to a shopping spree at the Lloyd Center mall. 

They spent most of Friday shopping at Washington Square mall and both Meaghan and Mandy managed to find shoes for the wedding.  Woohoo!  I didn’t get to see much of them that night.  I’m starting a new project for my employer and working on the planning and legal stuff for that.  Then I had beers planned with Mark for after work.  I came home a couple of pints for the better!  Fortunately we were still able to share dinner and a few glasses of wine before turning in for the night.  It was nice to get the chance to catch up.  I could tell that Meaghs had a blast shopping with them both; so nice for her to get some girl time to spend checking out all of the stores!

I spent most of Saturday reading about the Apache web server and researching Ruby on Rails.  I decided to take a look at how the open source world lives.  Then on Saturday evening I joined Relentless on a very successful raid through Zul’Aman; I even got a new dagger!

All in all, a pretty cool (if busy) weekend!

Zul’Aman.

Once the source of the prized [Amani War Bear].

Now nothing more than an antiquated and nostalgic raid instance.

Yesterday was the second time I’ve logged in for Patch 3.0.2. At first I just wanted to try out some battlegrounds for the night and maybe get a chance to complete some of the achievements. But I decided to put myself up in LFG for Zul’Aman, thinking people would have nothing to do on a Saturday night. Lo and behold, after 20-odd minutes in Alterac Valley, I got the call for DPSing Zul’Aman. After getting ourselves together for 10 minutes or so, summons went out, and we started the timed event in no time.

Akil’zon. Nalorakk. Jan’alai. Halazzi. This is only my second time killing all four of them. Then Hex Lord Malacrass went down. About 10 minutes after that, Zul’jin: my personal first. No wipes on bosses. All 4 timers complete. Instance completed in an hour and a half. I was not expecting such an efficient run. In one night, I got [The Savage's Choker], [Shadowhunter's Treads], [Trollbane], and [Tiny Voodoo Mask].

The Amani troll leader is defeated.

So this begs the question: Does experience in a raid instance really matter anymore?

For this run, I asked for explanations of Hex Lord and Zul’jin fights because my knowledge was minimal at best. But, really, they were barely needed at all. DPS the marked mobs and don’t die. It has now become as simple as that instead of position juggling and saving up on mana. My guildmate lamented how people are basically running instances for epic gear that will soon become useless come Wrath.

But remember the days when people were complaining that they don’t get to see upper content? You can essentially mostly PuG a raid now and still do fine without the coordination you find in a guild run. Raiding becomes individual experiences in doing their own jobs rather than communicating with others on what went wrong with the encounter and how certain aspects can be improved. For example, there was one time when a split-second mispositioning at Halazzi would almost certainly have cost us the last timed chest pre-3.0.2. But this time, we one-shotted him.

Will Wrath bring this kind of raid experience? We’ll have to wait and see.

Today in ZA I was able to get Tuskbreaker aftet months and months of wanting it and never having it drop for my hunter.  I know the cross bow from badges is better, but I don’t care – I love this thing.  I also changed out some of my gear because I was over the hit cap because of some new boots I got on Hyjal a couple nights ago.

The items I changed into:

Chest – Arrowfall Chestguard – This was already in my bank, but I decided to experiment a little more with haste now that I’m using the Tuskbreaker.

Hands – Gauntlets of Rapidity – Badge reward I decided to get; I was saving the badges for the cross bow, but changed my mind.

Finger – Angelista’s Revenge – same explanation as hands.

Feet – Quickstrider Moccasins – the ones I got in Hyjal, they’re pretty sweet and have skulls on them if you look hard enough! Haha!

In related news, ZA has been massively nerfed and we have all been massively buffed.  It’s not even challenging in any way anymore.  I’ve practically demoted it to Kara-farm status in my mind.

In other related news, hunters are way OP now.  I’m not calling for a nerf, but I feel one coming.

In completely non-related news, a made a new character on the Moonguard server – a Draenei Shaman named Xunni.  I’m thinking of leveling her elemental and yes, I know, I’m a masochist.

  Saturday, on the spur of the moment, we coordinated a Zul’Aman run to try the place out in the brave new 3.0.2 world. ZA is a place that I was very familiar with; prior to the baby, and my subsequent shift to working nights, I tanked the place twice a week. Enough people from the guild had rotated through these raids that the majority of us had a good working knowledge of the instance. The core group of people (and I would include myself and my wife in this group) had been on enough runs that we needed no explanation of any of the fights, having seen each (but Zul’Jin) at least a dozen times. So, we were able to piece together a pretty experienced group for this run. If memory serves:

• Protection Paladin MT
• Protection Warrior OT
• Retribution Paladin
• Elemental Shaman (Ness)
• 2 Beast Mastery Hunters
• Affliction Warlock
• Shadow Priest
• Restoration Druid
• Restoration Shaman (me)

  With the exception of the Warlock, we’d all been here before. Prior to 3.0.2, we were consistently able to get to Malacrass every run, but had a lot of difficulty downing him. The animal bosses, though, were completely on farm. In terms of chests, we’d been able to get 2 with some consistency. If we’d reached the third one between my move to nights and this run, I was not aware of it. Obviously, we’d never reached the bear mount. Fortunately, as this raid was compromised largely of experienced players, I could rest assured that it would be a smooth operation.

  I was kind of amused beforehand when our Raid Leader, the Ret Pally, whispered me to ask if I thought that Manchego was capable of handling the load with just 2 healers. Now, I knew that the Druid I’d be working with was very well-geared, but more importantly was played by one of the better players in our guild. Still, I’d done Kara a few times without a hiccup before with just a pair of healers, including Nightbane and Prince, and I’d improved her gear since then. I told him that I thought I’d be ok; inside, I’ll confess to some butterflies. I usually get that way when I’m doing something that may be pushing content for a given character. Turns out, I should save my butterflies for Mount Hyjal.

  We went with the usual Eagle – Bear – Dragonhawk – Lynx order. Right away, on the runup to the Eagle, you could see the difference. Before the patch, this would have been a time of some anticipation. The amount of heat on the forward Paladin tank is usually a cause for concern. This time? He probably could have run right up to the Tempest, too. There wasn’t even a scary moment. On Akil’zon himself, the Shadow Priest died when he was a little bit late on the run-in for a lightning storm. Right away the Druid battle rezzed him – and before either of us could get off a heal on him (we were both spooling one, as it turns out) – he got whacked again by a bird. Unfortunate, but we dropped Akil’zon all the same. On to Nalorakk.

  Once again, the trash on the run-up was nearly trivial. Even the mounted bears, who had wiped us before at times when a tank had some unlucky spikes, were nothing. I was concerned about Nalorakk himself, as we’d had some real touch-and-go times with him and his bleeds before. HoTs are a wonderful thing, though. Between those, and the reduced damage from the nerf, he was gravy. I think he shifted to his bear form twice, that’s it. Two down, and plenty of time left on the clock.

  One of the first things that you notice about the Jan’alai trash is how weak the sentries are. Yes, they were always weak… but now, they’re REALLY weak, down in just a few hits with no shot of getting to those damn drums. The second thing that I noticed was the Flamecasters. Before, they had some serious power. If one broke mind control, he had the ability to incapacitate a raid in a hurry. Now? Laugh it off and murder ‘em. Smooth pulls all of the way to Jan’alai.

  When we actually engaged him, we made a crucial error right away – and one that would have proven fatal in the old days. ‘Me hatchas’ got to work on some eggs, alright. We forgot to mark one for death and they got into both sides. The poor Pally was over on one side already, no shot at picking up the few that hatched before we could rectify our mistake. Right away, I drop a heal on the tank and see one of the new 3.0.2 animations – “Attacking You!”. Oops. Half a dozen Dragonhawks now headed my way, lovely. Fortunately, since I’ve spent most of my career tanking, I knew what to do – run to the tank. The conga line of hawks was polite enough to follow suit, and as soon as they got into the consecrate, felt more inclined to pay attention to the Pally than me. Victory! Things were mostly smooth after that, Ness got blown up in a bomb (I lol’d, too) and had to ankh – but other than that, fine. Lucky me, Jan’alai dropped that (previously) Healing Shield of his, the Enamelled Disc of Mojo. Finally, a replacement for my ugly old Crystal Pulse Shield!

  A slight goof on the way to Halazzi meant that we wouldn’t get a chance to see what chest #4 held (if it wasn’t a bear, then what?) when someone – or someones pet – aggroed as we were trying to get through the hut windows on the Halazzi shortcut. Half-a-wipe later (I lived!), we regrouped and merrily beat through the trash to Halazzi. I’ll confess, it’s scarcely even challenging anymore. Our Raid Leader actually laughed on vent when we got to him – he has something like 451,000 hp now. He went down so fast, I’m pretty sure that there was at least one merge phase that he didn’t have time to do his saberlash mechanic before he split again. With him in the bag, on to the chests!

  We had three of them to go back and loot, courtesy of our run time. In all honesty, I have a hard time believing how any group with previous ZA experience wouldn’t be nailing these three every time through now. The first chest – Cloak of Fiends. Minor cursing from me, I’d wanted this badly for Ribby’s Cat set and never got it. Second chest – Tuskbreaker. Again, minor grumbling as I’d love to get this monstrosity for Toro (cows with guns, baby). Same Hunter gets ‘em both. Third chest, the first time that I know of for MiM to bag this one – and it’s the Signet of the Quiet Forest. Lucky me, I win the roll on it and now I’ve got a BT-level healing ring!

  Malacrass run-up was nothing special, but this guy – man, I hate Malacrass. we decided to shackle one add, perma-banish another and burn two adds as fast as we could before moving on to the shackle and then the Hex Lord. I requested concentration aura beforehand (yes, I know the new pushback rules) and no consecrates once we’re on him, so as to avoid confusion. Anyhow, given how tough he’s been in the past, we kick it off fully expecting to take a try or two. First two adds go down in a heap, shackle drops right after the first round of Spirit Bolts. Now, it’s fun time. I’m Chain Healing my butt off to try and stay on top of everyone, and by the time he hits Spirit Bolt volley #3, I’m getting concerned. health bars are getting tougher to top off, but we haven’t lost anyone yet. I’m thinking to myself, “man, we need to get this guy down fast, he’s starting to hit hard” – but I don’t have time to mouse over him and check his health bar to know where we’re at. I’m thinking he’s probably around 25% or so, and I’m gearing up to defend against one more round of the Bolts – and he drops. Staff of Primal Fury – still never got this for Ribby - goes to the Druid, Prowler’s Strikeblade to the same Hunter that got the chest items. If only we had a Rogue…

  Past the trash pull when you open the doors, and it’s the big guy – Zul’jin. As a guild, we’ve never downed him (though, I can remember about 10 tries on a Saturday that saw us get as far as Lynx a few times.) Quickie description of the fight to everyone, and we take him on. First phase, I’m mostly looking out for Grevious Throws to keep people topped off. Nobody dies, on to Bear. We all hug the butt (except the tank), and immediately, problems with Creeping Paralysis. Heal through the first round, and bare seconds after the second one hits – Eagle phase. Horrible timing, as we all start the phase off at half health. In case you don’t know, anyone who casts a spell during this phase takes damage – but we had to suck it up and get everyone healthy to survive those whirlwinds. I was apprehensive at first about this, but soon noticed that my heals weren’t damaging me as much as I’d thought that they would. The phase ended a lot faster than expected, and then it was the Lynx. Before 3.0.2, we had not been able to heal through his rapid-fire attack / debuff. I’d heard that it’s a good idea to have everyone form a tight circle around him though, and so we did – and it worked! Healing through everything via Chain Heal was a lot easier than I remembered it ever being, this phase went very quickly and on to Dragonhawk. Nobody had any idea what to expect here, none of us had ever seen it before. Basically, DPS just went bananas and blew every cooldown – and we folded Zul’jin for our first ZA completion! Admittedly, It doesn’t have the same feel as it would have before the patch – but it still feels damn good. I know, as someone who threw myself into that place twice a week and ultimately met with futility for several months, I was smiling from ear to ear over the vindication of finally clearing the place – and I could tell from the voices over vent that sense of relief and accomplishment was shared by nearly everyone else there. Even better, he dropped a pair of chestpieces, the plate tank piece and – *gasp* – the healing Shaman one! Fortunately for me, the other Shaman was my wife, and she has the T4 piece off Mags – so I got that too! Hell of a haul for my first ZA clear, and it left me with precisely 60 badges – enough to get Anveena’s Touch and really pump up my ring slot. In one run, I’d managed to address what were my three worst slots – rings and shield – and top it all off with a chest that’s just under Hyjal.

  After that run, I’m over 1000 unbuffed Spellpower on Manchego, and enough spell haste to cut more than 10% off my cast times. Add in a few totems, drums, and a Ret Paladin, and I can blow out some fast healing in raids now! Heck of a nice feeling.

  My conclusion on 3.0.2 Zul’Aman? If you have any idea what you’re doing, and how the fights go, this is a great run. Solid gear pieces, runnable twice a week for 15 badges in about 2 hours’ time or less. I think that the difficulty for the place is about on par with what Karazhan used to be before the patch. In other words, just about any competent and knowledgeable group should be able to slaughter it easily. If you were at all hung up on this instance before, give it another look. I think that you’ll be pleased with the results, and the drops will easily allow a guild to get over that mid-level raiding hump and into places like Hyjal, or make Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep that much easier to master.

Last night was our first trip back to ZA since the patch went live.  The guild was still pretty stoked about the pwn’ing of Kara and we were excited to see how much easier ZA would be.  Well, after 3 hours we found that ZA was indeed easier, but no cakewalk.  I would say ZA is now what Kara was pre-patch.  Very doable, but if you are not careful things can still go south pretty quickly.

Prior to 3.0.2 we were only really able to get the Eagle and Bear down consistently with random success on the Lynx.  After the patch though, the night was filled with a bunch of guild firsts.

• One shot on the Dragon Hawk
• Killed the Hex Lord – I HATE SHADOW BOLTS!
• One shot on Zul’Jin

The night was filled with fun, firsts and phat lewts.  I myself am now the proud owner of the Hex Lord’s Voodoo Paldrons.  I look like a cross between a witch doctor and a meat drying rack.

A huge gratz to Udaan our guild/raid leader who finally got some loot after passing on most everything to gear up the raid group.  He got himself a new set of shoulders and the Tiny Voodoo Mask.  Those gnomes couldn’t have gone to a better man.

Within the next week or so I will be finishing my ZA raid guides.  The next three will be rather brief since the usefulness of those guides will be shortened by the looming expansion.

So, is it a telling sign that the very first thing I did when the patch finally came down was re-spec the hunter?

And the very second thing I did was re-re-spec the hunter when I found out I had misspent one of my talent points. Actually, that may be the third thing. I think technically the second thing was curse. A lot. After pissing about flying back and forth to Darnassus to respec, I headed to Un’goro to get myself a devilsaur. Devilsaurs are one of my warcraft fantasies and I was happier than a pig in mud to finally, finally get one! I trotted all over Un’goro, passing several hunters, some of them luckier than me. I finally spotted one, got his attention, trapped him, started the taming process and held my breath as that bar slowly, slowly went down.

And then an orc hunter came and killed the creature, millimetres before the cast bar was complete.

Now, I am aware that any creature is fair game, and there is no such thing as “my” mob, but to me that is borderline griefing. I *did* report him, in my frustration. Not that it will do any good, but it made me feel a bit better. And I don’t mind saying here that if anyone plays horde side on Thorium Brotherhood, you can tell Swagman he’s an asshat. With love. From Ori.

Happily it didn’t take me long to find another spawn and successfully tame him. I’ve called him Hob, and I love him! The stompstompstompstomp is delightful and I really was loving the attention he was getting while I hung out in Ironforge. My only complaint is that they move so wrong. This is actually a common complaint of mine (Blizz! I’m talking about kodos here!) and it’s something that niggles at my attention from time to time. I can generally ignore it but dammit it’s my tyrannosaur! And I’d like to think I know a few things about how they’re supposed to move! (For the record, I did my undergraduate thesis on the biomechanics of some of T-Rex’s smaller cousins.) How can they move so naturally, so gracefully, so biomechanically correct when they’re fighting and thud about like goose-stepping elephants when they’re just doing some plain walking!? Blizzard has some ’splaining to do.

And that was all I had time for the first night. I stayed up waaaay past my bedtime and seriously contemplated calling in sick so I could stay home and fiddle with all the new stuff. And enjoy stomping around with my tyrannosaur! (Devilsaur. Whatever.) With a heavy heart I trudged off to work and I just barely made it through the day.

Then last night we did a ZA run. We missed the timed event by a heart-breaking 40 seconds, and one-shotted Hexx Lord and Zul’jin, which made me very happy. Raiding with Hob the devilsaur made me even happier. His animations were delightful, I’m particularily fond of the snout-bash that he does. The 40 second raid buff was nice, but we didn’t have a lot of melee that run so I think the effect was mostly wasted. And monstrous bite is very nice. I’ve been out of practice and I had my shot weaving pretty off, due to a lack of mods (grrrr) and a lack of practice. I managed to weigh in with about 600 dps, which is pretty pitiful in my mind.

The last thing I did before I logged off was head to Azuremyst Isle and tame The Kurken. I gave him a different spec than the devilsaur, I’m going to hope that I can find a shot timer mod that’s working tonight and we’re going to head back into ZA. I’m looking to get much, much closer to 800dps, and hopefully the pet and some more attention on my part will accomplish that.

If not, I’m going to have to re-re-respec and say goodbye to my lovely tyrannosaur. *sniffle*

Edit: I wrote this before I saw the Blog Azeroth shared topic post by the always entertaining Pixelated Executioner. Since I’m getting hits from riding on his coattails, I figured I’d give the guy some link-love back. <3

Well, raiding has been fun recently. Rocked through ZA a couple times–i’ve now cleared every boss in everything up to Kael’thas. I feel experienced. =P

As far as loot goes, I haven’t gotten much–however, I did grab an upgrade that I would strongly recommend to any mages. The Shattered Sun Offensive rep reward necklace is all well and good, but honestly, I recommend spending a couple days grinding out 15300 honor and 10 EotS marks for the Guardian’s Pendant of Subjugation (I think that’s the right one! The one with no spell haste and extra +damage.) It’s a huge upgrade.

In addition, I have been doing really well in terms of socketing; I’ve spent 45 badges recently to get myself some +10 int gems, and am now over 14k raid buffed mana!

With the talent tree redesign and boss nerf coming up soon, I’m planning to stay as close to my current spec as possible until WotLK, when I go 50/3/18 for raiding. I’ve heard that that particular spec is gonna be awesome (source: elitistjerks.com). In addition, good news for all you raiding mages in T5–looks like we’re gonna be using that as long as we’re specced Arcane right up till Naxxramas II! Glad they’ve made the gear scaling a little less insane this time around!

Danke Naga für den Titel

Oh nein, ich habe gleich 2 Dinge auf einmal. Mir fehlt das 3. Was zum Spielen, Schokolade und eine Überraschung!
Mir fehlt die Schokolade, tut mir leid!

Wollen wir doch erstmal auf das Spielen eingehen.
Der Amani War Bear… geiles Mount, auch wenn er ein wenig aussieht als wäre er der Postbote des Schlingendorntales mit seinen beiden “Seitentaschen”.
Viiiiele Mountsammler wollen das Ding und kommen nicht ran. Was denkt sich da die “Wir haben mehr als genug Bären”-Gilde? Na klar, verkaufen wir doch das Bärchi an Leute die nicht die Möglichkeit haben auf eigene Faust einen Bären zu ergattern. Und man stelle sich vor, sogar auf unserem kleinen Serverlein Aman’Thul kommt sowas vor!
Celestial Dawn hats vorgemacht, wir von ultio haben nachgezogen. Und, welch wunder, auch exalted hat diese Möglichkeit jemandem eine Freude zu bereiten und gleichzeitig etwas für den Goldhaushalt zu tun, wenn auch etwas spät, noch ergriffen.
Nunja, exalted hat einen etwas anderen Weg gewählt: Den Verkauf an den Meistbietenden.
In anbetracht der Torschlusspanik die bei einigen Mountsammlern nun herrschen mag aber bestimmt auch nicht verkehrt
Aber unsere lieben Forentrolle sehen das ja anders… OH THE DRAMA!
Angebot & Nachfrage bestimmen den Preis… Angebot -> Sehr klein. 3 Gilden, noch 2 IDs… 6 Bären noch für die Allis, maximal!
Nachfrage -> Bestimmt grösser als 6 Bären.
Preis? Na also bitte, wenn jemand bereit ist 20k Gold für den Bären hinzulegen, wo ist denn da das Problem wenn dieser die 20k Gold hinlegt?
Aber unsere lieben Forentrolle sehen daran ja leider etwas verwerfliches… hachja…
Ganz ehrlich, ich wette, wenn wir uns am Dienstag Abend um 20Uhr zur verfügung stellen würden den letzten Bären zu holen, und diesen an den Meistbietenden geben, wir würden recht viel Gold bekommen. Und neeeeeeein liebe Forentrolle, daran ist nichts verwerfliches! Ganz normal ist sowas.

Aber ja, unser kleines Serverlein ist sich halt sowas anscheinend nicht gewohnt, die heile Gummibärenbandenwelt in der wohl einige zu leben scheinen existiert nicht, auch unser Server hat ein gewisses Mass an RL-Wirtschaftseinflüssen. Was halt bedeutet: Am Ende steigt der Preis!

So, nun zur Überraschung!
Der Schattenpriester… macht DMG! OMFG!!!!
*einen kollektivwink an alle Schattenpriestermimimiler rausschmeiss*
Heute Mittag habe ich meinen Informanten getroffen, bekannt als: Der Zürcher.
Er, der einen Schattenpriester auf dem Beta Server spielt meinte zu mir, dass er verdammt viel DMG macht, ja er gar das gefühl habe Overpowered zu sein. Oh nein, wie kann das sein!
Wie kann es nur sein, dass dieses ganze gemimimine nicht stimmt und auf Level 80 der Schattenpriester sehr gute DPS fährt. Oh, moment, hatte ich das nicht schon lange gepredigt?
Aber mir hört ja keiner zu *seufz*
Achja, und er hat kein T6/T7/T6723487692 oder sowas gehabt… T4-T5 maximal und paar Questitems…

Ups, fast vergessen: OH THE DRAMA!!!!…. ähm ja kA

Oh noooooooes mir fehlt immernoch die Schokolade

LG
Flausch

I /gquit Neo Imperela yesterday, and apped to Cloudy Day. It wasn’t because of the people in guild–they’re all great people and great players, and I absolutely loved playing with them–but rather just due to a lot of little things. We had been clearing–CLEARING–Kara for 2 months, and weren’t even TRYING to start ZA, really. Attendance for Kara was going down, and raids were a little sporadic at the end. (I found out that the guild wasn’t able to put together enough people for part 2 of Kara this week). I specifically asked Biochemistry what our chances were of seeing 25-mans pre-WOTLK, and he replied “0%”.

However, progression is only a small part of what caused me to leave. I was also put in a position I didn’t feel qualified to hold, and was expected to be at Kara every time, whether I wanted to go or not. At the time I left, I was in 3/5 T5, having got the shoulders (rolling against 4 hunters and 6 locks, I believe) the night before. I had totally outgeared the guild. In addition, we were going throuh some growing pains at NI anyway, what with the new GM Biochemistry. I saw multiple people leave the guild because of things that happened; one of my friends even transferred to Mal’ganis.

I had been thinking about applying to Cloudy Day for a couple of weeks; I kept on giving NI “just one more week” to see if we would even start ZA, or even just get enough people to guarantee a decent raid every week. Finally I just decided enough was enough; it was time to move on to a guild that’s motivated, and won’t expect too much from me in terms of putting me, a relatively new player, in a position that I’m totally unqualified for. (Yes, I know the Kara fights, but I’ve only played for slightly over a year. I shouldn’t be the one explaining them–that should be someone much more experienced in leading raids. I did not feel ready for that much responsibility, to be honest.) In addition, I’ve been raiding more with CD than I have with NI at this point.

I’m gonna miss playing with NI, but I really think I made the right decision. I left with a minimum of disruption, and I think Cloudy Day is right for me. I’ll be playing with Galistul again, which’ll be nice, too. Hoping to talk to Thenino tonight about my application.

On Friday night, I was raiding TK with Cloudy Day, and we absolutely owned face through the first 3 bosses in there. I didn’t die on Void Reaver early this time like I did last time (thankfully). Think I’m getting better at surviving. Ended up winning the T5 shoulders, which were a huge upgrade from my [Fel-Tinged Mantle] from H-MgT. I’m now completely out of heroic gear, save for my [Quagmirran's Eye], which I hope to replace either with a 41-badge trinket or with [Hex-Shrunken Head]–I only dream of the mage class-specific trinket.

Well I continued my moonlighting for Cloudy Day last night in Black Temple (!) after Kara; wiped a couple times on Supremus while we learned the fight. All sorts of fun, I’ll tell you what! I’m really enjoying the occasional glimpses at endgame, and Pwni/Thenino is a really good RL from what I’ve experienced. =) Running with those guys is just awesome. It’s really gratifying to look at my DPS meters afterwards and see that while I was alive I was putting out over 1150 DPS too–behind the 2 locks in raid, of course. =)

For the first time recently that I can remember, a majority of our drops in Kara were usable. Was really nice! I really hope that that keeps up tonight when we down Netherspite and Prince and then move on to ZA first boss. =) Hopefully we’ll be ready to start 25-man raids soon, I’m really excited to get on that track!

I’m hoping also for a Mag’s run tonight with Cloudy Day, if things work out I’ll be “Velinath, Champion of the Naaru” later tonight!

PLEASE comment this post if you’d like me to write a specific post e.g. more Kara boss strategies, or some specific nuance of magery–I’m totally willing to try and help out.

EDIT: Well Kara tonight…was interesting. We started raid with only 7 people, and ended up with 10 eventually. Every drop was usable tonight too, which was kind of nice

Six down, four to go!

We substituted a hunter for one of our mages, so our raid group looked like this:

Group 1
Prot Warrior
Feral Druid
BM Hunter
Rogue
Rogue

Group 2
Prot Paladin
Holy Paldin
Holy Priest
Destruction Warlock
Fire Mage

We made a couple of mistakes — we let an Armani Scout sneak by, summoning two reinforcements, and later “forgot” to rezz one of our rogues for several trash pulls (the priest though the paladin was doing it, and the paladin thought the priest was!) — but still made the fourth timer with two and a half minutes to spare.

It was a very good night for our Prot Paladin! He picked up two pieces of off-spec healing gear, the tanking shoulders from one of the timed chests (I forget which one, most likely because we’ve never seen them drop before!), the threat ring and his Armani War Bear! I know you don’t read this, Eanin, but congratulations anyway!

I guess the Mage/Mage/Warlock thing isn’t as bad as I thought. We took the exact same group as last time, and completed the fourth timer with three minutes to spare.

It was definitely an off-night for me, though. I forgot to put Fear back on my action bar after replacing it with the Tainted Core macro for our Vashj kill on Sunday, and couldn’t find it in my spellbook in time to Fear my target in the trash pull before Bear boss. (I don’t know why I had a Fear target with two mages in the group, now that I think about it ….)

I also mistargeted during a Dragonhawk trash pull and broke CC on a sheeped Flamecaster. /frown

Oh well. Five down, five to go!

I’ve been running ZA every reset for three months (and every now and then since it was patched into existence), and have seen the Hood of Hexing drop exactly once. I was outrolled by a mage (henceforth to be known as “Troll Barbie” .

Troll Barbie happens to be a good friend of mine, so … no big deal. It’ll drop again.

Except it doesn’t.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t play for the “purplez.” On the contrary, I am famous for passing on gear I want, simply because — as Master Looter, and therefore the one intercepting all of the “PLEASE! I will never ask for anything ever again, ever!!1!11!” bids — I know that other guildmembers want it more.

But six months after we retired Karazhan, I’m still rocking a Voidheart Crown. It’s beyond time for a helm upgrade, but in all our months running TK, we never saw Voidreaver’s cowl drop, and the Hood of Hexing is proving to be equally elusive. I’m pretty low on the priority list for a T6 token, which — in three Archimonde kills — we also haven’t seen drop. (Meanwhile, our Boomkin already has an offspec resto helm!)

So, I’m forced to conclude that the Hood of Hexing is a myth.

The Cowl of the Grand Engineer is a myth.

And Warlock/Priest/Paladin T6 is a myth!

To top it all off, after picking up the Mana Attuned Band last night and replacing two Golden Lionseyes with Reckless Pyrestones, I’m hit capped from gear alone . . . which means that even though the Hood of Hexing is still a huge upgrade for me, it’s also 31 points of wasted itemization (at least until Naj’entus decides to drop his slippers and I can replace my Boots of Blasting).

I give up.

Group composition for Bear Run #4:

Main Tank: Prot Warrior
Off-Tank: Prot Paladin
Off-Off Tank: Feral Druid
Healers: Holy Priest, Holy Paladin
Melee DPS: Rogue, Rogue
Ranged DPS: Mage, Mage, Warlock

We usually run with one mage and an enhancement shaman, for Windfury, Bloodlust and a quick out-of-combat rez that doesn’t consume the healers’ mana. Unfortunately, our shaman wasn’t available so we brought a second mage instead. I’m not sure we’ll do it that way again: melee DPS was noticably slower without the shaman buffs, and the second sheep went largely unusued on trash pulls.

As unconventional as our typical set-up is, there was even less class synergy with this group and we struggled to make the fourth timer. Last reset, we finished with four minutes to spare; the week before, three. But last night, we came in mere seconds ahead — and were lucky to come in at all, given that our warrior died in the first three seconds of the fight. It wasn’t his fault; the tankadin panicked and botched the pull. Fortunately, our feral druid (my boyfriend), was able to pick up Halazzi and tank him in cat gear. He even managed to battle rezz me while tanking!

… Nerf druids. Seriously.