One Day Events Suck

I missed Pirates Day.

I was away from my computer due to RL reasons and so missed out on getting the achievement.

The same thing happened to me on the AQ gates opening event which wasn't even an all-day event but rather one that took place only during a few hours.

That kind of sucks. I much prefer events which take place over several days so that if you miss playing on one day you at least have the other days. Obviously you could take this argument and stretch it to silly lengths such as "let's complain if all events are not 1 month long". Well maybe some people feel that asking for a "Pirates Day" which is more than 1 day long is just as silly but I think it is no use to anybody to take things to extreme, if the purpose here is to let people have fun, why not do it over 2-3 days instead of only 1 day? I'm sure there is a simple Gaussian which will show 99% of WoW players log in within a 3-day span or something like that...

Also, who ever heard of pirates getting drunk for only one day? :)

Oh well, maybe next year...

Warlock is already 64

In only a day I dinged 2 more levels, one from questing and one level from more Blood Furnace followed by several Slave Pens + Underbog boosts with my friend, who seems to have decided to take my leveling under his wing :)

So I just thought to mention that since I don't want to lose track of my levels :)

Warlock Dings 62

I should have posted when Locksolid hit 60, but RL kept me away from having enough free time to both blog and play and I preferred to play.
I actually dinged 60 only 2 days ago. However a level 80 friend decided to help me out yesterday and took me through 5 Ramparts+BF runs (I think it was 2 Ramparts and 3 BF), and the XP from mobs + quests inside those instances saw me through from level 60 to 61. From 61 to 62 I leveled today in 2 hours by questing in HFP, flying around on my brand-new normal speed (150% these days) flying mount. What an upgrade to the leveling experience vs. running on the ground!

So for a total of a few hours spread out over 2 days, I leveled 2 whole levels. That's amazingly fast progress (in my eyes) and I'm very happy with it.

So far so good, looking forward to the next few levels and tons more fun with my warlock. Ability to kill 5 mobs 2 levels higher than myself at the same time? Check! Soloed Drillmaster Zurok, a level 62 elite, at level 61? Check! Warlocks are great, sorry all you mages out there :)

Oh and in other good news, patch 3.2.2 notes show Shadow-priests getting a little buff-loving. Here's hoping for some better raid DPS!

A Few Updates

Still very busy with work so not much time to blog...

Solidfaith still raiding, guild doing well, although I missed the Toc-25 normal clear, at least I got to clear ToC-10. Also got some Ulduar achievements such as FL+4 towers in 25man which is nice for the guild (but I'm not too excited about it, as it doesn't look like achievements are ever going to mean anything).

My warlock hasn't seen a lot of play time but even with the little I have played, I have managed to level him to 55. Sadly none of it was in Un'goro, since I had a warlock quest in Felwood, got carried away with doing some quests in that area in general, and before I knew it I dinged 2 levels ;p

The thing which is mostly on my mind now is making sure I have enough gold to buy him the epic flying skill once I ding 58 - I want to do Outlands leveling in style :)

I actually had some fun last night playing on my long forgotten mage Solidstate. First of all I got him the cold weather flying via the tome, so now he's flying around Northrend at level 71 :)

Also a friend sent me a huge pile of Frostweave cloth so I leveled my tailoring, I got all the way to 433 which is way above what a level 71 character needs ;)

As I had the ability to fly and some spare time (no raid last night), I decided to do the Dalaran Oracle-orphan quest. It worked well, I got lots of free XP just for flying around, both for discovering new areas and for completing the individual quests in the chain. On the way I did a couple of quests in BT and it was really fun flying around to exactly where I needed to go, dropping down right on the quest mobs heads as it were :)

I even did the daily fishing quest, something I haven't done in a long time on my mage. Didn't get any special reward, alas.

Based on my experience with Solidstate I'm really looking forward to leveling my warlock while flying, it is so much faster and more fun than running around on the ground, especially when you combine the ability with Questhelper so that you can just follow the dots around the map directly instead of being slowed down by annoying mobs along the way. 3 more levels without flying to go...

Shadow Priest - Disappointing

I'm working hard and don't have much time to post updates, but I continue to raid and play with my new guild and we've taken down the 3rd Coliseum boss encounter, Faction Champions in 25man (and 10man but that was easy :)).

Today we also did a part of Ulduar-25, we spent a couple of hours trying FL + 4 Towers. It's a hard, complex fight, and while the people doing the hard stuff are well practiced, we still didn't manage (10% best try). In the end we took him easily with 3 Towers and continued on our way.

But while I'm winning loot (and gearing up using badges), I'm annoyed at my low DPS as Shadow and I feel frustrated that no matter what I do, I still end up on the lower end of the damage meters. Even an officer who is a much more practiced and better-geared s-priest than me, only made it to about 7th place on the damage meters. That... sucks. Unfortunately there doesn't seem much I can do about it :(

Maybe I should continue leveling my Warlock ;)

Yogg-Saron Down

I haven't posted in a while, not due to lack of playing in WoW but basically due to work pressure and also because I wanted things in WoW to settle down a bit before I wrote about them.

You see, I've left my guild and joined a new one.

I don't want to criticize the previous guild too much - they did after all accept me, gave me a place in raids and let me win loot. However raiding with them felt very much like a "job" rather than a family. Relations with most officers were basically limited to a guild-invite and I felt neither appreciated nor wanted. Nor did I like some of the decisions made by the officers, like looting all plants from Freya's room as well the the Alchemist Cache from her loot to themselves. Well they said it was for the guild bank, but then they wanted members to buy (for gold) flasks from the guild-bank. I don't mind not getting free flasks from GB but taking the plants just for officer use seemed self-serving to me.

Another example of the lack of personal interaction I felt, after a strong raiding start I had to stop raiding for a few weeks due to work pressure. During the time I was not raiding not once did an officer or the GL so much as whisper me asking me what was going on with me. Don't get me wrong I'm not looking to get scolded but I would have expected at least casual interest - when is the new recruit coming back to raiding? Later I learned I had been demoted to social - without telling me anything. The feeling I had was, you're not wanted and not missed.

Anyway, I said a short (1-sentence) bye in gchat and left, followed quickly by talking to a friend about joining her guild, a raiding guild with similar progress to the one I had just left (they had downed Yogg right after the patch). After talking to her I posted an application with her guild and the day after I was accepted.

That was on Saturday. On Sunday I was invited to an Ulduar raid which had Vezax and Yogg left and we took down both, giving me the Heroic Ulduar achievement. That felt good :)

The only regret I have is that they needed a Shadow Priest which means no more raid healing for me - a role I enjoyed and was good at. Shadow Priest DPS isn't so good currently (see Misery's blog for details) in general and more specifically my gear is not so good - it was off-spec gear so my position in the damage-meters was pretty near the end...

Still I'm sure my gear (and DPS) will improve and I look forward to more fun raids with my new guild, who it must be said have a very amusing Vent channel :)

Little Roo

Last night I finally decided to do the Dalaran Orphan quest. I picked up the little Oracle orphan Roo, as I chose the Oracles faction in Sholazar and thought I might as well stick by my faction :)

I thought the chain would be painful and annoying but as it turns out it wasn't too bad - just fly around Northrend a bit. With a 280% flying mount that was not so bad. It was fairly good gold, although at the end I goofed-up a bit and in the Wonderworks shop I bought the zepplin kit (4g) instead of a 'small zepplin' (80s). So I wasted 4g, omg l2read noob :)

I barely ever take out a pet so having the pet Roo (which you get in the mail after completing the chain) isn't important for me, but it's nice to mark another thing "done".

Later that night I tried the achievement in Occulus heroic of killing the last boss within 20min of the first. It went hard, mostly because we missed a patroling drake around one of the platforms who attacked us and killed 2 of us after we landed. But in the end we actually managed to get the the final boss with 2 minutes to spare and having 5 red drakes we should have managed. However I think we used the abilities wrong and we wiped due to a combination of too-low DPS and the small whelps that spawn killing us. I'm going to have to do some reading before I try that again...

In other news my Warlock hit level 50 but I haven't had too much time to play with him since the patch. Having switched to Demonology the new pet (Fel Guard) is nice but the advantage of having him is offset by having weaker DoTs compared to Affliction and most importantly no mana back ability from Drain Soul, meaning I am constantly struggling with mana, unlike Affliction. Am considering switching back to Affliction, will see...

Patch 3.2 First Impressions

I'm liking it :)

Mind you, that's not a totally positive thing - it means I don't love the patch, as I feel the new instance/raid leaves much to be desired. I've covered this previously but I'll summarize my feelings - it's nice to have a new instance, but I just don't feel an instance composed of nothing more than a round room is worthy of the title of a "raid instance". Not when compared against the likes of everything from Molten Core, through Karazhan, Naxx and Ulduar.

Still, there's plenty to like about the patch. I love the profession boosts, the new epic gems, everything. It has breathed new life into all professions.

I've done the new 5man in both normal and heroic versions and I would categorize the normal version as fast, fun, easy enough to be nearly impossible to wipe, a very good place for people just dinging 80 to go to. The heroic version was much harder, my PuG wiped several times. Yet the GY is very close, you can even enter the room mid-fight (bug?) and the wipes were mostly about us not knowing the tactics - first time there, and the bosses have different abilities in heroic. Compared to some other heroics it is very quick and not too hard, and gives very good loot.

There are a TON of new daily quests in the Argent Tournament for my priest, so getting more gold should be very easy.

I bought the +10xp chest for my Warlock and mailed it to him, I hope I will feel the difference while leveling. I'm also looking forward to getting the 100% speed mount.

That's pretty much it. I'm tired, but pleased. Today I took the time to enjoy the patch and the rush of new content, however over the next few days I will continue to work hard, so not much game time for me, alas. Still it was worth it and I'm very happy with the fact that I have plenty of new stuff to do now :)

Dinging News

So many updates, hence the strange subject :)

First of all my efforts with Solidfaith doing low-level quests and grinding the daily Argent Tournament finally paid-off - he's now dinged exalted with all the city factions. He's also exalted with the Silver Hand and champion of all the factions except Gnomergan (holding off on turning that in till the patch, for extra dailies = more cash). This means that once patch 3.2 arrives I will be able to buy the new heirloom Bind-On-Account +10% XP chest for my Warlock using the Champion badges, which is very nice :)

In other "dinging" news my Warlock hit level 47. At this point I stopped his mad rush upward long enough to power-level both Mining and Engineering. Mining is now at 227 after buying a few gold ores and tons (200?) Mithril Ores. Smelting Mithril is still green so theoretically I could still level my Mining even further, but it's not really worth it - I can probably much more easily (and economically) mine my way to 230 at which point Truesilver smelting will be available for further power-leveling.

Using all the Mithril bars from the mining power-leveling I leveled my Engineering, when I hit 245 I made myself the best item I have so far got from Engineering, a head slot item called "Green Lens". This is actually, despite the name, a blue-quality item and apart from the standard 10 stamina is created with a random enchant - I got +29 spell power which is very nice and should last me quite a few levels. There are also a few nice trinkets available from Engineering but since I'm using the heirloom trinkets, I don't think it is worth the hassle - the nice thing about BoA items is how they scale with my character leveling.

Anyway all of this leveling is done mostly very late evening after I finish working for the day - still not raiding due to working late. So considering the amount of time I have to play, I think I'm doing not bad at all :)

I'm currently questing in Tanaris but will probably soon visit some other areas, like maybe Searing Gorge - tons of quests there if I recall correctly. At ~50 it's off to one of my favorite areas in the old world - Un'Goro Crater :)

Alliance in BGs

The following Peanuts cartoon describes exactly what happens to Alliance in BGs:




It would be funny if it weren't so sad and true...

WoW Not Conductive For Multiple Play Styles

This post I'd like to rant a bit about WoW's addon system and multiple play styles/chars.

Let's say that you have a player who likes to do both PvP and PvE. Furthermore, she also likes to play multiple characters, some are low level and need to level and some are high and raid. No problem, I hear you say. With duel-specs and a built-in equipment manager she can respec to a PvP spec when she wants, use PvP gear, and switch to another character via log-out and log-in. All dandy, right?

No.

Thing is, WoW is really not the same without addons. Sure I realize they are not a must and some people even play without them, but they are really helpful once you get used to them. The problem is:

1. There is poor support in the general addon screen for multiple characters. The character selection drop-down list feels clunky and annoying to use, you can only modify addons for a single character at a time. Worse, I've had it bug-out on me and change addon selections for all characters, even though I had a name selected in the pull-down list.
   As an example of where this is annoying, if I install a new addon it starts enabled by default for all characters. What if I don't want a, for example, BG addon on my priest who doesn't do BGs? Arrgg.
   
   
2. You have to manually click on every addon line, but sometimes addons have multiple entries per addon, for example think DBM or X-Perl. In other words, the manager doesn't have the option of addon collections. This is especially bad when taken together with item (1). Want to disable DBM for all your low-level chars (who aren't going to need a raid addon soon)? Multiple-clicks FTL :(
   
   
3. The manager runs outside the world - if you login and find a problem, or just want to make a dynamic change - e.g. go PvP with PvP addons but have them turned off rest of the time - you need to logout, make the change, and log back in to your char.
   
   
4. There is no clear support (IMO, looking as a user) for separate settings of addons per character. Yes some addons do this themselves and do it well (X-Perl is a good one) but most don't. Sure you could claim this is the province of the addon author, but it just makes so much sense to have built-in the ability to change addon settings per character.

The upshot of all of the above is that if you have a single max-level character who only does one area of WoW (say PvE), you mostly won't feel this pain. But if you have multiple play styles and/or multiple characters, handling addons will soon become a chore and a pain, especially when switching roles/play-style in-game.

Gnomish or Goblin Engineering?

I've been working hard on my Warlock's engineering, and am now a level 200 engineer. This means that I can specialize in either Goblin or Gnomish engineering.

From what I read, there is not really a huge difference, hence I tend to go with Gnomish, just because I am a Gnome :)

But, anyone have any specific recommendation?

Oh, and ding 43, yey :)

Warlock Dings 40

Well I dinged 40, but it seems wow.com's Alex did the same thing (at nearly the same time) and his experiences mirror mine - his warlock is specced Affliction for leveling, he dinged 40 at Dustwallow Marsh and it the number wasn't as "magical" as it was the back in Vanilla WoW. That 60% mount sure looks sweet compared to running all over the place :)

So nothing much to report, except as before, still leveling very quickly and tons of quests left in my quest log. I've nearly skipped STV completely, that's how quick I made it from 35-40!!

2 New Playable Races == Fail

For the record, I don't really believe that Goblins and Worgens will both be playable races in the upcoming expansion. But just as a "what if", let's say that is going to happen - why do I think it is fail?
Well very simply:

1. Blizzard have resisted adding more character slots per server. Assuming they continue with this policy, this means for many players either deleting an existing char or rolling the new character on a different server (or getting another account but this is really not a valid option for most people). Big boo if this turns out to be the case!
2. Leveling up yet another alt from 1 to 90?! ouch :( Don't get me wrong, I like alts, but I like leveling a new class - different talents, different way of leveling. Leveling another char 90 levels just to have a different looking char seems, well silly. I realize there are altoholics out there who would happily do this but I feel they are in the minority. With race differences being 99% cosmetic, I just don't see the point. Especially, when you consider the fact that these are 90 levels we will be talking about after the expansion...
3. Spreading out of developer/artist resources for little benefit. As I said, 99% of racial differences are purely cosmetic. So adding new player races similar to how the Draenai/B-elves were added will mean adding two new level 1-20 areas, making new armor skins for these races for levels 1-90 and making all other changes required to support new races (their casting animations, etc.). All of this effort, to what end? At least the Draenai/B-elves added the Shaman/Palandin class for the Alliance/Horde (respectively), so they were not just a new race. Here we are talking about a new race for it's own sake...

I think if Blizzard do add 2 new playable races, it only makes sense if: (a) They come with a new hero class that you can only roll with the new races and this class starts at level 65. (b) The expansion adds another character slot per server to each account. (c) Not Goblins. Dear Blizzard, please not Goblins! :)

Warlock @35, Advancing Nicely

One nice thing about writing a blog, I can see stuff I would not have remembered otherwise. So I can see that 6 days ago I was level 28, and now I'm level 35, so slightly better than a level a day. Considering I didn't play every day, that's pretty good!

Of course it could have been faster, for example if I followed a leveling guide. However I enjoy questing and the process of leveling and while it will be nice to hit max-level with this char, I'm in no rush to do so (not like I'm going to raid with him).

Affliction continues to be a very nice leveling spec, in terms of DPS and little downtime. Well actually my DPS could be higher, I saw that when I was invited to an SM Armory run. I knew I was a little low-level but I figured I would give it a try. As it turned out I was the same level as most of the group (33), except a level 40 hunter. The others were a pala tank, a ret-pala and a priest acting as healer. Well the tanking changes made since WotLK was released have sure made their mark on low level tanks as well, out little paladin tank had almost no problems holding agro and we pretty much rushed through the mobs, almost with no problems (I died once) and no wipes, even though we pulled additional mobs from time to time when low-health mobs ran away. At the end of the run I was below not just the two other DPS but also below the tank in damage.

After the SM Armory run I did a nice Warlock chain quest, mostly involving a lot of flying about and sending stuff from my bank alt to my Warlock. The hardest thing I had to do was kill a few mobs 3-4 levels about me (fire elementals in Arathi), which was not too hard. In the end I got a very nice blue chest, so I'm happy :)

Playing a Warlock

Since I have not raided last few days I have some free time when I finally login to WoW late at night. Last night for example I only logged in when the raid was actually almost done, so I guess on second thought it's not so much free time, it's more that I'm not worn out from raiding and want to go to sleep but I login and want to play even if it is pretty late.

Doing dailies for rep and gold is nice and all but I wanted to do something else and doing PuGs late at night when all I want is a short and fun game session is out of the question. Hmm what to do? Level an alt of course :)

Now I could have gone to one of my level 70 alts but on a whim I decided to forget about Northrend for a while and logged into one of my low-level alts, a level 22-ish Warlock. Now I have not played him much, got to level 22 over a very long period of time and in the past whenever I did play it was not much fun, seemed to be just another underpowered clothie caster. This time I decided it would be different, so I bought every Bind-on-Account item I could get my hands on using my priest's stock of badges and Stone Shards and sent them to the Warlock. I got the shoulders (+10% xp, yey :)), Staff of Jordan (great 2H stave) and 2 trinkets with both an equip stat boost and a proc every time a mob dies (+health and +mana, great for leveling and perfect for a Warlock).
I also sent the little guy (he's a gnome) 200g and splurged in the AH, getting some nice green gear for all other slots. Some of his previous gear was from level 15 or even 12, sheesh!

Well what can I say, the new gear sure made a difference, plus getting new abilities as I dinged levels. I'm now level 28 and feel like a real bad-ass, DoT-ing and Fearing my way to victory. With my big blue bodyguard by my side I'm consistently taking down groups of 2-3 mobs my level and even higher (1-2 levels higher usually).

My best kill so far was of an elite one level higher than me who had a caster add, it was a really tough fight as the caster banished me right at the start. Luckily I'm Demonology specced so my Void Walker managed to last till the banish was over and I could stream some health to him. I finished the fight with both me and the VW almost dead and me OOM, but eventually we won.

It is definitely a huge difference from my mage - of course I leveled him during Vanilla WoW, very different game then. But still, as a mage I was always dying (or afraid of it), almost never attacked multiple mobs and my down-time was significantly longer. I find that in comparison a Warlock is tons of fun :)

I understand from reading forums that until level 52, Affliction is the preferred spec for leveling. However I personally prefer Demonology even if it is a bit slower, as I feel safer that my pet can tank several mobs at a time without dying, and it is not so easy to get agro from him. I'm also not following any leveling guide, instead I'm just doing quests as they happen, whatever is in my log and seems interesting, even if it involves a lot of running / flying on griphons. Still I'm looking forward for level 30 and a mount.

Traditionally I've always found levels 30-40 the hardest to level (most boring), with 40-50 being not much better. In addition, the current work pressure will ease off eventually and I'll go back to raiding so not sure I will have time for more leveling. So I'm not sure I will get the Warlock much higher. But we will see :)

On Social MMOs

Keen has an interesting post about Bringing the Social Game Back. I had some comments but they became too long, hence this post :)

There are two main ways for players to interact with each other in an MMO: either by competing or by cooperating. Note that these don't map directly to PvP and PvE since you still have cooperation in PvP (your side's team) and competition in PvE (no direct example comes to mind but I could imagine a scenario or two).
There are also more minor forms of interaction, such as trade, crafting and chat.

I don't think Keen is right that the way to make MMOs more social are things like forced groupings, harsher death penalties or more "meaningful quests". The first only relates to PvE content and in any case anything which forces players to do something will end up alienating some part of the player base. The second is too negative - too much stick, not enough carrot. The third has nothing to do with social - you can have epic solo quests as easily as grouped ones. One suggestion I especially didn't like is the "No map / crude map" one. I'm sorry but it is never a good idea to make a technically worse game in order to force your players to work around those limitations. Some will. Most will leave for greener pastures, and with good reason.

But I agree that more social MMOs would be a good thing. How to achieve that?

* Provide strong incentives for player cooperation, without making it too much "stick" or too much "carrot". Examples could include better XP while grouped for leveling; easier game mechanisms (than WoW's - I don't know what other games have) for forming groups for group quests/instances/raids; a strong guild system with benefits for players the longer they stay in the guild; etc.

* Provide equally strong and interesting game features for players who prefer competition. This can take the form of PvP, RvR, PvPvE, or even competition-based PvE.

* Trade, crafting and chat (as well as other social tools such as ingame voice) can all enhance the social aspect without having artificial limitations (e.g. no auction house as Keen suggested). In a game focused more on PvE and PvP these will probably be minor, but there is plenty you could do even in such a game: special crafting mats which require groups to get; recipes which require active (same-time, no alts) cooperation between players with different professions to produce; The "carrot" to offset these limitation would be that the items produced from such cooperative efforts would be better than average.

I think a game which would combine all the above in a strong and polished way would be even more successful than WoW :)

A Forced Break

Raiding has been very good since joining the new guild, just yesterday we cleared Ulduar25 up to and including Thorim and I won a very nice pair of boots, finally replacing my very old Naxx10 boots. We've gotten Yogg in 2nd phase down to 60% so only another 30% to go and we will be able to enter 3rd phase.

However, due to work pressure I have decided I don't have any choice but to put in some extra work time in the evenings, which means I need to give up raiding for a while :(

A List of Useful WoW Sites

Now here's a nice list of useful WoW sites:

http://wiki.twistednether.net/index.php?title=WOWUtils

It's a wiki too, so anyone can help edit it and add more sites. Very handy.

Thinking of the new 3.2 Raid Instance

There are so many 3.2 news items right now, it seems almost a shame not to write about them.

On the other hand, I hate writing about PTR changes. Here one week, gone the next... so much for the buckets of words you spent on them :)

But I will say this, so far, I like the gem and profession changes (although I wish the Alchemy perk had been beefier). I like the token changes, badge changes and the new druid look (but I wish holy priests wouldn't get nerfed). I like the possibility to extend the raid lockout.

I don't especially like what I'm reading about the new raid instance. If I understand correctly, it will be basically a ring-style event rather than a proper instance. Now don't get me wrong, I like beating difficult boss fights (right now my guild is wiping on phase-2 of Yogg-Saron and I'm loving every minute of it :P). But I also love a dungeon's atmosphere, I loved it that SSC and TK and Karazhan and Molten Core and BWL and AQ (20, never did 40) etc. each had a unique look and feel and that as you progressed inside you not only saw new bosses but also new interesting rooms opening up. The instance would draw me inside and the feeling of being in an epic place enhanced the pleasure of fighting epic battles. Let me put it this way, would the Ragnaros fight had felt half as epic if you hadn't had to make your way to the very center of a huge underground cavern full of molten flowing Lava? If all you had to do was enter a bare round room and poof he would appear in the middle of the simple dirt floor?
The trash clearing up to bosses is also part of the challenge of an instance and while I never liked too much trash, too little trash is also I think problematic. No trash at all is just not appealing to me and I think ultimately detracts from the fun of the raid.

What can Blizzard do to spice-up the new "ring-of-blood raid"? Maybe have the look of the room change when the boss appears, so that you actually got a room with different size, LoS mechanics, etc. for every fight. Even better would be if at every "stage", the raid started out not directly fighting the boss but at the beginning of a small instance with a short distance and a small amount of trash to clear before getting to the boss room.

But in my nightmares I dream it will be none of the above, that instead we'll get a simple arena, dirt floor and all, and bosses appearing out of thin-air, completely devoid of atmosphere, lore and setting, like giant pinyatas ready to shower epics if only the raid can get the tactics right... if that becomes the new end-game raiding instance I fear I will lose a big part of my motivation for raiding :(

There I go, writing buckets of words about un-released content that is sure to change 10 times between now and release... so I think I'll stop now :)

Ulduar-10 Hard Modes

Apart from the regular Ulduar-25 runs during weekdays, my new guild also does Ulduar-10 runs during the weekend. Sometimes it is 2 groups, usually a strong "A" group (who have cleared Ulduar-10) and a much weaker "B" group.
Last weekend there were not enough people for 2 such groups so there was only one group, a mix of people from both groups. Since there was pretty good firepower and healing, we took on some hardmodes and achievements.

XT - we managed to kill him within I think 200 seconds or something like that. Very nice DPS, even I as a healer helped a bit :)

Hodir - we went for getting him down within 3 minutes, did a very good job with the crit buff but we were just 6 seconds short - I blame it on the fact that I had to heal all the time so couldn't help the DPS :)

Freya - we went at first right to the biggest challenge, taking her down with all 3 adds up. The complexity and intensity of the ensuing fight has to be experienced to be believed, I seriously have to say I didn't feel as challenged since trying OS+3. As a healer, the amount of stuff I have to do and be aware of is way above a normal Freya fight. Unfortunately, I was suffering from lag and DC issues (which in fact I have been suffering from for the last week or 2) all evening, and a healer not there 100% means an almost sure wipe in this fight. Nor was I the only one with such problems, plus we also started with an under-geared OT who was simply impossible to keep alive when he was tanking the 3 big adds. Well to make a long story short, after quite a few tries the RL decided to give up, we took down one of the adds and proceeded to 1-shot Freya+2. I guess all those attempts on Freya+3 helped us learn the fight well :)

We continued to Mimiron however it was too late to do anything serious with him so we just did normal mode, no hard mode for him. After Freya+3, one-shotting Mimiron seemed almost easy :)

I read in another blog that hard-mode fights were just "gimmicks", or "more of the same (boss abilities)". Having experienced first-hand some of them, I have to say that this is only partially true. At least so far for Council, Freya and (from what I've read) Mimiron, this is plain wrong. In addition, while there is nothing different about the Hodir fight mechanics when you are going for hard-mode, execution becomes everything and this does change the fight - it's no longer enough to beat the enrage timer, you now have to really execute perfectly in order to beat the much harder 3-min timer. If good fight execution isn't a test of hard-core raiding, then I don't know what is :)

Running Molten Core

Last night there was no raid scheduled and I decided to pursue an old dream of mine, try to get the legendary Thunderfury for my DK. What set it off was a friend telling me he wanted to work on his reputations and mentioned a few names, including Hydraxian Waterlords.

So my friend (on his rogue) and myself (on my DK) started out to Molten Core. Neither of us had the required object to douse the runes but we figured we would get all bosses except the last 2, he would get rep and the bindings for the sword have a chance to drop from bosses before the last 2. However it turned out that Blizzard have changed it, now when a boss is killed his rune automatically goes out, so we would clear MC.

When we got there, I found out my DK was not attuned to MC so we quickly did the ATC quest (took us all of 5 minutes). Luckily for us as it turns out, a druid friend decided he wanted to come as well. He is boomkin specced but he healed us a lot and really without his healing we would have wiped a lot more so I'm glad he came.

As it is, we did manage to wipe, 2 times due to silly stuff and once due to wrong tactic. The first time we wiped was trying to take out Shazzrah before Geddon, instead of course we pulled both her and Geddon and a patrolling hound at the same time, plus I got lag spike at the same moment (but we would have wiped even without the lag).
Second wipe was when I pulled Geddon while rogue was AFK, I and the druid forgot that Geddon does a magic debuff on the raid that burns mana and without a paladin or mage to remove it, the druid's mana was gone in a second. Without healing on me and too low DPS, I died with Geddon still at 50% health (rogue came back to find himself dead :)).
Third wipe was on Majordomo, we thought the healers would be a problem so I suggested the druid go bear, taunt one healer to him far from the pack, quickly take him down with the rogue and so on, while I tank the rest of the pack. Well that turned out not too good, especially as I DC'd mid-fight. Also it turned out it was not a problem at all to AoE down the entire pack.
So after that wipe we simply AoE'd the entire pack down, with the rogue using reduced-healing poison and interrupting heals where he could and we quickly won the fight too.

Ragnaros actually was a bit harder than I expected, not because of the boss (he hit like a wuss) or adds - we took him down after only 1 pack of sons and the sons ofc we AoE'd down within seconds of them spawning. The problem was, I had never before been at Ragnaros as melee/tank so I didn't know where to stand, and the knockbacks he did threw me in the air so high that I took considerable falling damage every time I landed on ground. Thankfully the druid was able to heal me through it and eventually the rogue found the right place to stand so that I fell into the lava every time. TBH I don't remember the tank and melee getting thrown around like that at level 60, but it's been a long time and I played a mage back then so I didn't pay too much attention to melee positioning.

All in all it was a very nice full-clear of MC, we did it 3 people in about 2 hours, including 3 wipes which we could have easily avoided. Of course we ran past most of the trash instead of trying to kill them, as that really would have taken too long. It was a fun evening, a little bit of a challenge and brought back a lot of nice memories (just before the Ragnaros pull the druid goes "ok no pulling now before you give us 15 minutes of tactics", that set me lol-ing, we really did have some of the longest tactics sessions back at 60 on Ragnaros :)).

No bindings of course, but enough gold to cover the repair bill and then some - not really good gold/hour but than, that wasn't the purpose. Oh, and my DK got the Molten Core achievement, which is nice :)

Running Ulduar-25 with the new guild

Here are some impressions from the few runs I've done so far with my new guild:

* Raid setup is fast - while typically in my older guild, even though we were doing only 10-man raids, it took us a long time to get started. According to guild rules we were supposed to start invites at 19:45 server time, in reality we would still be missing people at 20:00. Many times our raids would start only at 20:10 or later - sometimes much later. With the new guild, you are supposed to show up online at 19:30, even though raid invites are at 19:45. Invites start on time and no special effort is made to make sure people come, e.g. asking if people need a summon. People are just expected to show up on time at the Ulduar entrance, and typically they do. Yesterday was a very good start for example - invites were on time and raid was filled by 19:50. I had to go AFK for 5 minutes - by the time I got back (19:55), most of the area leading up to Flame Leviathan was already cleared... by 20:05 FL was down.

* Optional (non-tier loot) bosses are skipped if possible. In my old guild we did FL, followed by Razorescale, XT and Ignis (who is IMO the hardest boss in the first wing). Only after first wing is cleared did we use to continue to the second wing, where we would go for Assembly first, followed by Kologarn, and the bosses after him. My new guild takes down FL, XT, skips Razor and Ignis and the Assembly and goes right for Kologarn, opening the way to the harder bosses. Last night we wiped some on Thorim but had we taken him down quickly and managed to do Freya, we would have had all of today for Vezax and Mimiron and Yogg-Saron - bosses which are still hard for the guild. I like this method of clearning Ulduar and I'm sorry we didn't think of it in my previous guild. Live and learn.

* Minimal setup time before boss fights - if someome doesn't know tactic it is explained briefly but the sentiment seems to be "lets do it and if we wipe at least you would have seen the fight which is better than a long explanation". On the one hand I like this, spending 20 minutes in my old guild explaining tactics to people new to the boss was something I always found very annoying. However I think the new guild takes this minimal setup approach to an exterme, for example, there is almost no healer setup done, except when required by fight mechanics (e.g. split up the group on Razorscale to 2 sides or gauntlet and arena group on Thorim). On the one hand this saves time, on the other we have wiped in the past due to healing problems... well, time will tell what is the correct balance.

* Back to the DKP - a 10 man raiding guild is small enough to just roll on loot, I think (I hope I am right) that after a week or two all people got at least some loot from bosses. In the new guild they use a DKP based system, on the one hand this is good due to the inherent advantages of a DKP system (the more you raid the more chances at winning loot), on the minus side it seems to make people only care if they have enough DKP, some people I've seen out-bidding on items even when it was clear the other person bidding needs the item more.

* We have nothing to be ashamed of - basically the people who came over from the old guild are 1 DPS, 1 tank and 2 healers (well and 1 social :)). In tems of doing your job in the raid, knowing to "get out of flames" and being high on meters I think we are all doing a great job. Our DPS has been as high as 3rd place, incredible considering his gear (mostly 10man Ulduar). On healing meters we are lower but healing meters in any case don't measure everything and the important thing is that the raids we are in manage to take down even hard bosses (there are some hiccups but those will go away as our gear gets better).

Oh yeah, last point - it feels good to be raiding regularly again :)

A New Guild

Sometimes, love just ain't enough...

I remember a song in the 90s with those words, or something similar. Somehow it was the first thing that jumped to my mind when I thought about why I had to leave my current guild.

Sometimes people leave their guild because they don't love it, or they don't fit in somehow. Last night I left Phalanx on my main, Solidfaith. I did this together with 4 other people, not because we don't love Phalanx, but because raiding had completely stopped lately and there was no solution in sight.

In hindsight, perhaps it should have been obvious. A 10 man serious raiding guild is a strange beast, caught in the middle, not good enough for the serious raiders who want 25man loot and achievements and the casuals who only want/are able to play once or twice per week, who cba to read boss tactics or show up for raids prepared and on time.

So, as much as we (the Phalanx officers) tried, we just couldn't recruit serious raiders. And the casuals who sometimes joined us claiming to want to raid but then barely showing up to raids just made things worse. As we lost raiders due to attrition and RL reasons, we simply didn't manage to replace them.

Some people might think that us leaving Phalanx is just another variation on the raider who has geared up enough in his current raiding guild and jumps to the next higher level. But there is a big difference between leaving a guild still actively raiding and leaving one which doesn't even manage to have enough people online to raid, night after night.

My new guild has at least 3 people I know previously (have guilded with), apart of course from the people I moved-in with from Phalanx. There are also several people I have pugged with who I know to be good people. So I felt comfortable right from the start, not a "stranger in a strange land".

In addition, right after we joined last night we were invited to a 2nd 10-man Ulduar run (the guild does 25man raids during the week and 10man during the weekend). Even though we were new and this was the "b-group" we still managed very nicely, taking down FL, XT, Kologarn, Auriaya, Hodir, Thorim and Freya. Not exactly the order I am used to but still half of Ulduar cleared after a late start and with people not used to playing with each other? Not bad :)

In addition, even though I am new and have no DKP I still was allowed to win (by roll) several items of gear - I won new shoulders and a new 1-h weapon (dagger) which are a very nice upgrade to my gear.

So long Phalanx, it's been a long road, not easy but with a lot of satisfaction. We did very well for a non-hardcore guild IMHO, and I have nothing but respect for all the great people who made it happen, including those who due to RL could not show up for every raid. I'm sorry it didn't work out better but I think those left behind understand.

Naxx Alt Run

Last night we setup an alt/social run to Naxx.

On the plus side, it was nice to play a little with my DK, I got his some loot, got to use him a bit and remember why I had so much fun leveling him. During the run I got to do both a little tanking and mostly DPS and I think I did good on both. My tanking spec felt good to me, I had plenty of "emergency" buttons and I think my health regen as blood helped the healers.

As a DPSer I did pretty well (considering my gear), about 2.3k DPS on some boss fights. On trash I think I could do better, I am thinking maybe putting a point in Corpse Explosion, but since that will only really help on trash mobs, I am not sure I will go that route.

On the negative side, Naxx bores me a bit due to having been there so many times :)

Also, we had an OT who's main is a hunter and he didn't know the correct tactic (as a tank) for some of the fights, causing us wipes. Especially on the first boss of the Spider Wing we wiped several times until I replaced him as OT.

The run was also slow due to wipes, low DPS and having to explain tactics to a couple of social people who had not been in Naxx before. We were also only 9 people there as there simply wasn't a 10th person online and this didn't help, but still, looking at Recount during the run when you see someone supposed to be a DPS character doing below the tank, you realize you have some DPS problems :)

Still overall I am happy I went as I got some badges and even the T7 shoulders. We cleared 2 wings which is not too bad. I got the gloves token with 60 badges and got the tanking version of the gloves and shoulders with the tokens since I consider tanking to be my main spec for the DK.

New Computer, Ulduar Advancements

I haven't updated in a while but not due to lack of things to write about, just lack of time :)

For one thing, I got a new computer (yey :)). It's a very nice gaming machine, built to be a good combination of bang-for-buck plus as quiet as practical. The important components - an E8400 Core 2 Duo Intel CPU, HD4870 based graphics card from Sapphire, Sileo 500 case from coolermaster and a Silent Pro 600W power supply. Thanks to these components I can run WoW at ultra graphics mode while still barely hearing the computer fans.

At the same purchase I also (finally) replaced my aging 19" CRT with a 24" LCD screen, specifically a Samsung 2443BW Syncmaster. It's a good TN-based screen, suffering from the usual problems that TN screens suffer from, e.g. don't try to look at the screen from the side, not perfect colors (this specific monitor is a bit on the bright side). But since I'm the only one looking at the screen it works for me. As far as I can see the picture quality is superb (after a little tuning) and the price was just right :)

The computer shop people were kind enough to install (by my request) Windows 7 RC for free and I have to say I am every impressed with this newest iteration of Windows. Everything feels snappy and works very smoothly while at the same time, the eye candy is superb. Of course Windows XP on a new machine would also probably feel snappy but it would not be as pretty :)

I did have some trouble with WoW, for one thing some log files, patch files etc. keep insisting on appearing in another directory, it's not a real problem just annoying. A more serious problem I had was that every time I would exit WoW, it would crash. This prevented addons from saving their preferences, which made playing with them impossible. Since I love my addons, I was about to give up on Windows 7 (I was blaming it) when a Google search finally came up with the real culprit - ClearFont3, a new addon I had installed in parallel to moving WoW to the new computer. There's a lesson here, don't change too many variables at once...

Anyway, now that CF3 is gone all works fine. Thanks to my new screen and computer I'm playing WoW at 1900x1200 resolution and as I said in Ultra graphics mode. Actually a bit below since I lowered shadows. So far I've seen a minimum of 35fps in Dalaran and usually I'm closer to 55 so I'm happy :)

As for in-game, my guild has advanced nicely in 10 man raiding, if a bit slowly. We've cleared the first 2 wings of Ulduar, downed Hodir and are now trying Freya. So raiding is going fine for now.

All in all good times, I just wish I had more free time, RL keeping me very busy. For example I'm starting to get curious about other games, I feel I've been playing only WoW for too long now. Well maybe I'll cut down a bit on WoW, we'll see :)

Respeccing to Holy

Last night we were going for another evening of tries on the Assembly of Iron encounter in Ulduar. Problem was, both our Resto Shaman and Holy Priest were not present, we only had 2 paladins and myself as healers. Since the encounter has a lot of AoE damage, I decided to respec to Holy.

Actually I had been thinking of respeccing from Disc to Holy for a while now, both due to recent Disc nerfs but also because I used to be Holy before WotLK and I missed the AoE healing power. When I tried Holy out as a fresh level 80 in 5-man runs, it was pitifull - low healing output and catastrophic mana regen soon combined to drive me to Disc. However I had read that Holy scaled very well with gear.

Well, Holy certainly lived up to its promise in terms of HPS (Healing Per Second) output. According to Recount I was pushing over 3700 HPS on some of the tries last night, with ~35% overhealing. For 10-man gear, that's pretty awesome. However, I'm sad to say that while the mana situation is not as bad as I remember it from my initial level 80 impressions, it is still pretty bad. I'm guessing Blizzard optimized mana regen for 25-man groups where regen is naturally higher, leading to too-low regen in 10-man raids. I never had much trouble as a Disc priest, but that's not surprising - my main spell as a Disc is Flash Heal, which is very mana efficient as a Disc. Especially with mana returns due to shields.

Sure I still can optimize my gems and maybe enchants too, getting slightly more spirit. Also I need to look at glyphs, there may be glyphs more suitable for Holy priests compared to my current Disc-oriented ones. But overall I'm pretty bummed and not hopeful at all. It's all nice and well to have high-healing output, but when you are running low in the middle of the fight, having used Shadowfiend, pot and Hymn, people are going to start dropping pretty soon after :(

More Fishing and a Bit of Leveling

Solidfaith got to 350 fishing, only 100 points left till the cap :)

After I got to 350 I pushed on to 375, most of it done in Wintergrasp. WG fishing yields all of the fish needed for the Fish Feast, which I have been cooking and using on guild raids.

I also took some time to continue leveling Supersolid, my hunter. It is really amazing how easy it is to level a hunter. Sure if you want to level fast you need to put some thought into it, but if you really want to stick to the basics, just send in your pet, turn on autoshot, and read a book while the mob's health goes down :)

Of course I didn't really do it this way but the point is, it is possible. Even with my DK leveling was not that easy.

In any case part of the leveling was done killing Rhinos in Borean Tundra. Why kill Rhinos? I get XP for Supersolid, Rhino meat for Solidfaith to cook and use (+16 MP5 and +40 sta, not bad), Chilled meat for daily cooking quests as well as some cooking recipes, leather for Solidd to level up his leatherworking on and the occasional green item for Solidstate to DE. It's slow leveling for Supersolid but very good for most of my alts :)

First Ulduar Wing Cleared

My guild, in spite of having raid attendance problems and therefore a low number of raids over the last few weeks, managed to clear the first Ulduar wing.

Ignis was the last boss to die (last night) and the toughest fight, although I expect this will get easier as people get used to the fight, which is very dynamic.

Actually we had 1 person from outside the guild come and join us (one person had to leave mid-raid and we didn't have anyone in the guild online who could come). But I still consider this a guild take-down as he was DPS and I think if we had a DPSer online from the guild, we would also have managed to take Ignis down.

My guild's main problem now is lack of people. We have very few people who show up on a regular basis, the rest show up for raids only sporadically or not at all (socials). We have missed many raid nights or started late due to this and it is really frustrating for those people who do want to raid. We are thinking of a raid alliance as a solution but it's hard to find another serious guild willing to take 5-10 people and give them raid spots. What will the future hold? Only time will tell...

Fishing

I've been very busy on Solidfaith for the last week, partially because of the Argent Tournament dailies but also because of fishing.
I've always liked fishing in WoW, starting from when I started playing my first character, Solidstate. I can still remember trying out the small pools in Elwyn Forest and the first time I stood on the dock in Tanaris, fishing with the setting sun glowing in the sky and making the water all sparkly :)
I find fishing not just a relaxing alternative to grinding but also a very useful skill to have, giving me access to all the buff food I could use.
Still for a long time I resisted leveling fishing on Solidfaith. I figured having one character who is a max-level fisher is enough. The problem is, I haven't had the time to level Solidstate to 80, so his fishing oppurtunities were limited. The problem really started to bug me when I started getting closer to 450 cooking on Solidfaith. The only recipe currently at 450 cooking is the Fish Feast, which is a great raid buff food. However it requires fish which really require a character with a flying mount to get.

For this reason I decided to level fishing with Solidfaith. What really helped me decide were the recent changes to fishing, which made it much easier - and less boring - to level. Thanks to the fact that you can now fish anywhere, I could level my fishing while still sometimes getting useful fish. In fact I'm now sitting at around 310 fishing but thanks to +100 lures and the Kalu'ak +30 fishing pole I can fish succefully all the fish I need for the Fish Feast - made 5 of them last night :)

Another reason I decided to level my fishing was to be able to do the new fishing daily quests. I find the daily cooking and fishing daily quests to be a great source of a little gold, usually not much but fast to get and fun too. Also if you get lucky you can get a nice bonus, for example I got one time in the reward bag a gray item which I sold to a vendor for 100g :)

Leveling my fishing to 450 is not going to be fast but thanks for the new ability to fish anywhere I am not dreading the process nor am I in a hurry. I can take my time and simply enjoy a few minutes of fishing per day - exactly, I think, the way fishing is meant to be :)