Sadly due to the amount of work I've had recently and my employer's IT team deciding to block any blogging websites it's meant I couldn't update my blog as often as I had meant to. This combined with trying to make as many raids as I can to support the other officers in my guild means I've been playing lots and had lots to write about, just not really had the time.
My guild is doing well. We're currently bashing our heads against LK25 HM which is just a painful fight even with the buff. We also recently got our first shadowmourne the other day and its owner has been putting out quite frankly sickening dps (it's also good on putri25 HM, because we tend to have that guy tanking in the abomination which bases its damage off of his weapon damage - he did 18k dps on that fight).
I've been incredibly ill so have been mostly standby. Except for the fights we still struggle with I've not really been to many of the icc fights this week on HM.
The main result of my flu has been my paladin who's professions I powerlevelled to Northrend levels as well as nabbing him 3bits of tanking T6 and enough shinies to ensure his levelling will be peaceful and smooth. Just don't talk to me about mining mithril in the hinterlands...
I also rediscovered my favourite pvp movie in my bookmarks whilst looking about. It's callled Danaik 3 Tripple D and it left me gobsmacked the first time I saw it. Its not another one of those "high crit" videos its a hunter ranging in level from 72-78 taking on raid geared 80s (i think ulduar was progression at the time) and completely and utterly destroying them. I highly recommend it - link below
Daniak 3 Tripple D
Currently planning next weekend to pull my finger out and get myself the 10man drake. Haven't really been bothered till now as our 10mans are friday and saturday evenings which I made a promise to myself to keep sacred. So I've set the challenge on our guild forums and I'll see who shows up. It's only liable to be Putricide and Sindragosa that provide the challenge but we'll see. Hopefully in a couple weeks I'll have a shiny drake to show off or if we decide to put progression aside and do the 25man achievements - 2 drakes!
/echo out
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Sunday, 18 April 2010
A reminder of why I still raid
Posting this very late as I've had a fairly hectic work schedule (long story but essentially I had to find a new role within the company I work for). In addition to this I no longer have access to any Blogger or Wordpress sites from work, so please if you find me commenting less on your own blogs please understand that I still check my favourites even if I don't always have the time to post.
Monday the 6th of April I had a reminder of why I still raid.
We had 23people 10mins after raid start and in /o we were having premonitions this raid being like our last 2 raids on thursday and sunday which were cancelled due to lack of people that could do the Hardmodes. One of our pally healers logs on, and the last of the bulgarians logs on. We has raid.
Immediately start on Saurfang HM. We've been just about managing to hang in there sub 30% when the Marks really start hurting but we've been losing people at 5% and wiping (one memorable wipe last week my beast died and I distracting shotted the boss). People are staying positive and assigning marks and then 4th time we managed the kill. Very impressive stuff from our healing squad.
Then onto Rotface HM where we oneshotted and then Festergut HM where after a small wipe due to DPS dying (I swear I was in range of the goddamn spore!) and other DPS being stupid with Malleable Goo we took him next try with a pally bubbling on enrage and the dots taking him down for our second new HM kill of the night.
From there we moved to the Princes HM which I swear is a test of "can you stay awake while shooting balls" and BQL HM where we managed another enrage pally bubble kill second try after our bite order severely messed up.
So then we cleared up putricide on normal and headed back into the frostwing lair where after a minor altercation with one of our healers and the subsequent ragequit on the pull (who does that?, I mean really) we adjusted the raid and bounced back to take down Valithria on HM second try. It was getting very late by this point and by the time we'd killed sindragosa on normal we had 1minute to raid time. So we said to the raid:
"Look we realise it's raid time. Stay with us and we'll have one shot on the Lich King then we'll call time"
We zone in on the spire and hurriedly assign tanks and dispellers. We've got a couple of us who haven't downed him on 25man and in my case I've never seen the penultimate phase. Halfway through P1 we realise we haven't assigned Valkyr dps
"Fuck, just go fucking nuts on them"
we haven't assigned TotTs or MDs for raging spirits
"Glue them to the fucking tanks"
Healers are running low so our boomkin is calling the innervates for the lowest. We're on the valkyrs now and people are playing out of their skins to get the CC in. I'm kill shotting Valkyrs right at the edge. Slightly badly placed Defile caused by me, but we're all out of it in seconds.
We hit the second remorseless winter in fine form and then P4 and vile spirits are dying quickly and the tanks are kiting.
All of a sudden its over and everyone is joking about kicking one of our rogues so he doesn't get the kill.
Lich King one shotted. Hello Kingslayer Echo. Hello the reason why I raid. It's not so much the stuff we accomplished last night although thats always gravy. It's more that this is a group of people who for the last year I've spent upwards of 16hours a week with in 25mans and countless hours here and there in alts runs, 10mans and nostalgia runs. I've actually really missed them since I had to stop raiding so much midweek. I know most of them pretty well and this last push from them after the loleaster holidays trouble of the past few days has been epic. A lot of people have been musing that we don't kill LK enough since we downed him. This may be true but focusing on hardmodes is an obvious choice we've had to make as an officer team. The fact that nobody was screaming at anyone when things didn't go perfectly or already working out who to blame for the wipe while everybody was alive was really refreshing. This showed when we bounced back from everything the big bad of the expansion threw at us and downing the bastard to top off an already awesome raid night.
/echo out
PS: Its nothing to do with the 10% buff fuck you :D
Since this happened we've also taken down all other hardmodes we were working on and are now 10/12. Putricide HM went tonight and we're working on Sindragosa HM. The night described above is what I see as the turning point.
Monday the 6th of April I had a reminder of why I still raid.
We had 23people 10mins after raid start and in /o we were having premonitions this raid being like our last 2 raids on thursday and sunday which were cancelled due to lack of people that could do the Hardmodes. One of our pally healers logs on, and the last of the bulgarians logs on. We has raid.
Immediately start on Saurfang HM. We've been just about managing to hang in there sub 30% when the Marks really start hurting but we've been losing people at 5% and wiping (one memorable wipe last week my beast died and I distracting shotted the boss). People are staying positive and assigning marks and then 4th time we managed the kill. Very impressive stuff from our healing squad.
Then onto Rotface HM where we oneshotted and then Festergut HM where after a small wipe due to DPS dying (I swear I was in range of the goddamn spore!) and other DPS being stupid with Malleable Goo we took him next try with a pally bubbling on enrage and the dots taking him down for our second new HM kill of the night.
From there we moved to the Princes HM which I swear is a test of "can you stay awake while shooting balls" and BQL HM where we managed another enrage pally bubble kill second try after our bite order severely messed up.
So then we cleared up putricide on normal and headed back into the frostwing lair where after a minor altercation with one of our healers and the subsequent ragequit on the pull (who does that?, I mean really) we adjusted the raid and bounced back to take down Valithria on HM second try. It was getting very late by this point and by the time we'd killed sindragosa on normal we had 1minute to raid time. So we said to the raid:
"Look we realise it's raid time. Stay with us and we'll have one shot on the Lich King then we'll call time"
We zone in on the spire and hurriedly assign tanks and dispellers. We've got a couple of us who haven't downed him on 25man and in my case I've never seen the penultimate phase. Halfway through P1 we realise we haven't assigned Valkyr dps
"Fuck, just go fucking nuts on them"
we haven't assigned TotTs or MDs for raging spirits
"Glue them to the fucking tanks"
Healers are running low so our boomkin is calling the innervates for the lowest. We're on the valkyrs now and people are playing out of their skins to get the CC in. I'm kill shotting Valkyrs right at the edge. Slightly badly placed Defile caused by me, but we're all out of it in seconds.
We hit the second remorseless winter in fine form and then P4 and vile spirits are dying quickly and the tanks are kiting.
All of a sudden its over and everyone is joking about kicking one of our rogues so he doesn't get the kill.
Lich King one shotted. Hello Kingslayer Echo. Hello the reason why I raid. It's not so much the stuff we accomplished last night although thats always gravy. It's more that this is a group of people who for the last year I've spent upwards of 16hours a week with in 25mans and countless hours here and there in alts runs, 10mans and nostalgia runs. I've actually really missed them since I had to stop raiding so much midweek. I know most of them pretty well and this last push from them after the loleaster holidays trouble of the past few days has been epic. A lot of people have been musing that we don't kill LK enough since we downed him. This may be true but focusing on hardmodes is an obvious choice we've had to make as an officer team. The fact that nobody was screaming at anyone when things didn't go perfectly or already working out who to blame for the wipe while everybody was alive was really refreshing. This showed when we bounced back from everything the big bad of the expansion threw at us and downing the bastard to top off an already awesome raid night.
/echo out
PS: Its nothing to do with the 10% buff fuck you :D
Since this happened we've also taken down all other hardmodes we were working on and are now 10/12. Putricide HM went tonight and we're working on Sindragosa HM. The night described above is what I see as the turning point.
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Ulduar Achievement Happy Fun Time
Blegh, having a chance to raid this week means the weekends recap is slightly late. Still, another HM down on 25 and we spent this wednesday working on saurfang. But back to the business at hand:
Following last week's rather random Algalon kill a group of us decided we'd venture once more into Ulduar to earn ourselves some more nerd points. After some reasonable levels of interest on the post I'd left in the guild forums detailing the "shopping list" we were going to use I was hopeful it would be a breeze forming. Unfortunately one of our tanks decided he'd rather arena than come along so I struggled a bit there. Once I'd finally managed to get 2 reasonably geared tanks online it was merely a case of arbritating between the raid members which achievement to do. I also had to do a lot of warning that we weren't here to do drake achievements which unsurprisingly caused a load of people who hadn't read the forums to ask to come then immediately ditch. I made sure to mention this because I've helped out on enough Ulduar 10s and to be honest the reason I have done none of the achievements I'm after is because there was always at least one person who was getting the drake. A couple people did tag along and were happy to pick up what they could.
I cannot stress how much of a good time we had. Obviously a lot of us overgeared the place to shit so that made some achievements rather trivial (Yogg in 7mins done with 1min30s to spare :D ). Another great thing is that as a raiding guild nobody really wants to go back and do this shit except the people who weren't with us the first time around. So hearing some people's reactions on vent when kologarn pops up, or yogg emerges, when you engage Algalon or even the train to mimiron (Which was hijacked! Also being levitated when the train is turning causes deaths, thank you Ami) was really nice and reminded me of how I used to view the place before it became too familiar.
We had reasonable speed throughout, and apart from a couple hiccoughs managed to get people credit for their Champion of Ulduar metas on most bosses as well as most of the hardmodes when we didn't need anything specific.
Here's what I managed to tick off (Link spam):
Nerf Scrapbots - Slightly RNG dependant, we waited till we had 4 pile spawns then went mental on the bombs
I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim - Relatively easy, we were trying for Can't do that while stunned too but unfortunately someone missed an interupt.
With Open Arms - Pretty easy with our nuke dps
Nine Lives - Cleared a big space and kited the boss around, cue much hilarity when the tank decides to face the boss away and dies. Feral druid bears up and we nuke it down.
Lumberjacked - Interesting achievement for the healers, easy when we nuked each one we pulled down to 10% before pulling the next. Then once 2 of them were low I MD'd the last one (Brightleaf - the one that heals) to the tank and we nuked it down then killed the other 2.
They're coming out of the walls - Easy, spawn a load of adds from the clouds and nuke them down. In the end it was myself and a mage AOEing. We got the achievement then wiped
He's not getting any older - Wierdly its phase 1 thats often the biggest problem here - with our gear and the watcher buffs its too easy for dps to overnuke the adds. The power of having 4 of us in ICC25 gear go mental on the brain meaning 1 portal phase drastically shortened the fight. It was then a relatively easy third phase where we spent the majority explaining to those new to the fight how the insanity worked and what the best way to preserve it was. It led to a druid guildie who'd never seen much of ulduar before getting about 4 achievements (yogg + general, full clear, nobody insane, 7min).
Supermassive - Narrowly missed out of He Feeds On Your Tears then wiped three times due to people failing at portals.
Champion of Ulduar - Although we intitially tried to get this for a couple of people it was only me and another two guys who picked it up. My two missing fights we properly pulled it off (Vezax and Freya)
Over 9000 - Not Ulduar related but after all the of the nerd point farming it popped up for me as it did for our pally healer when he got Champion of Ulduar.
10 Achievements left in Ulduar10! Although considering some of them are very tricky or RNG based it should be interesting - eg Alone in the Darkness and Herald of the Titans .
So, I've set out this weeks list and we're going for the as many as we can again. More people are making enquiries and we're expanding this to the entire WotLK 10man instance achievement list and hitting everything we can.
Anyone else been achievement farming?
Following last week's rather random Algalon kill a group of us decided we'd venture once more into Ulduar to earn ourselves some more nerd points. After some reasonable levels of interest on the post I'd left in the guild forums detailing the "shopping list" we were going to use I was hopeful it would be a breeze forming. Unfortunately one of our tanks decided he'd rather arena than come along so I struggled a bit there. Once I'd finally managed to get 2 reasonably geared tanks online it was merely a case of arbritating between the raid members which achievement to do. I also had to do a lot of warning that we weren't here to do drake achievements which unsurprisingly caused a load of people who hadn't read the forums to ask to come then immediately ditch. I made sure to mention this because I've helped out on enough Ulduar 10s and to be honest the reason I have done none of the achievements I'm after is because there was always at least one person who was getting the drake. A couple people did tag along and were happy to pick up what they could.
I cannot stress how much of a good time we had. Obviously a lot of us overgeared the place to shit so that made some achievements rather trivial (Yogg in 7mins done with 1min30s to spare :D ). Another great thing is that as a raiding guild nobody really wants to go back and do this shit except the people who weren't with us the first time around. So hearing some people's reactions on vent when kologarn pops up, or yogg emerges, when you engage Algalon or even the train to mimiron (Which was hijacked! Also being levitated when the train is turning causes deaths, thank you Ami) was really nice and reminded me of how I used to view the place before it became too familiar.
We had reasonable speed throughout, and apart from a couple hiccoughs managed to get people credit for their Champion of Ulduar metas on most bosses as well as most of the hardmodes when we didn't need anything specific.
Here's what I managed to tick off (Link spam):
Nerf Scrapbots - Slightly RNG dependant, we waited till we had 4 pile spawns then went mental on the bombs
I Choose You, Runemaster Molgeim - Relatively easy, we were trying for Can't do that while stunned too but unfortunately someone missed an interupt.
With Open Arms - Pretty easy with our nuke dps
Nine Lives - Cleared a big space and kited the boss around, cue much hilarity when the tank decides to face the boss away and dies. Feral druid bears up and we nuke it down.
Lumberjacked - Interesting achievement for the healers, easy when we nuked each one we pulled down to 10% before pulling the next. Then once 2 of them were low I MD'd the last one (Brightleaf - the one that heals) to the tank and we nuked it down then killed the other 2.
They're coming out of the walls - Easy, spawn a load of adds from the clouds and nuke them down. In the end it was myself and a mage AOEing. We got the achievement then wiped
He's not getting any older - Wierdly its phase 1 thats often the biggest problem here - with our gear and the watcher buffs its too easy for dps to overnuke the adds. The power of having 4 of us in ICC25 gear go mental on the brain meaning 1 portal phase drastically shortened the fight. It was then a relatively easy third phase where we spent the majority explaining to those new to the fight how the insanity worked and what the best way to preserve it was. It led to a druid guildie who'd never seen much of ulduar before getting about 4 achievements (yogg + general, full clear, nobody insane, 7min).
Supermassive - Narrowly missed out of He Feeds On Your Tears then wiped three times due to people failing at portals.
Champion of Ulduar - Although we intitially tried to get this for a couple of people it was only me and another two guys who picked it up. My two missing fights we properly pulled it off (Vezax and Freya)
Over 9000 - Not Ulduar related but after all the of the nerd point farming it popped up for me as it did for our pally healer when he got Champion of Ulduar.
10 Achievements left in Ulduar10! Although considering some of them are very tricky or RNG based it should be interesting - eg Alone in the Darkness and Herald of the Titans .
So, I've set out this weeks list and we're going for the as many as we can again. More people are making enquiries and we're expanding this to the entire WotLK 10man instance achievement list and hitting everything we can.
Anyone else been achievement farming?
Saturday, 27 March 2010
Passing Loot
Now with various bloggers running into trouble with their guilds for posting drama seeding posts I hesitate to post this. However, I've always tried to keep my blog private although not to the extent that if they find it they will not automatically be incensed by what they find. I don't even directly link to my guild on the blog just because I don't want any unwise or retarded ranting I do to reflect on them. As a background we use EPGP which we reset at the beginning of each new tier of content.
Let the ranting begin
Basically I'm a little annoyed. Due to a new initiative at work I often have Wednesday or Thursday back at my base site near home so starting this week I was able to attend our thursday raid which consisted of Deathwhisper Normal (lots of wiping on HM DW on wednesday after HM Marrowgar 1shot), Gunship HM (lol), Saurfang on normal, princes HM and tries on BQL again on HM.
At Saurfang, Deathbringers Will drops. A lot of our Mainspec DPS have it so the majority of the rolls on it were Trials/Offspecs. One of our rogues rolls because as Combat it's his BiS too. As a slacker who's been averaging 1 raid a week since TOGC25 this troubles me because I'm on top on prio on EPGP and its my BiS too. It's also an item I've been building my gear around and getting it would enable me to properly pursue my gear progression without resocketing. This will also be the second time I have passed the trinket. Our system also rewards people for their attendance (not to mention we punish people for missing raids and not posting and for particularly retarded mistakes/behaviour) and that is reflected in their availability of gear to them.
Now I know this rogue. I like this rogue and to my mind the obvious thing for me to do is to pass it because his attendance is much higher than me and I reckon I'll only have 50% attendance for the next few weeks and my previous attendance was 25% for the last two months. As I'm mulling this over a minor shitstorm is breaking out on vent because I'm mulling over the decision and have told the officer doing Master Looter to continue going as the Tier pieces being rolled for don't affect the prio of anyone involved.
I got very angry. I am not a fuckwit - in the end I am in this guild for one reason and that is to see us as a whole progress. When I see people getting butthurt over loot it really annoys me given the sacrifices myself and the other officers, not to mention the longstanding members, have put into it.
Whether I choose to take this piece of loot or not, the opinion of certain loudmouths, either on vent or via whisper, mean nothing to me. If the system allows it - the items I win are mine and I have attended the relevant number of raids to win them. I will not sell my priority to the highest bidder nor be influenced by people threatening drama. If somebody wants to tell me what the fuck I should do then they can expect my response to be telling them what to do (fornicate themselves with a chainsaw).
In the end I looked at the information in front of me and I made the decision I felt best suited the Guild.
Congratulation Roguepal bff! My reward was the DPS you put out on BQL you crazy Sonofabitch. We'll get that sparkly bitch next time (0.5% wipe = painful)
/echo out
PS. Fuck the trials it's mine next week muhahahahah
Let the ranting begin
Basically I'm a little annoyed. Due to a new initiative at work I often have Wednesday or Thursday back at my base site near home so starting this week I was able to attend our thursday raid which consisted of Deathwhisper Normal (lots of wiping on HM DW on wednesday after HM Marrowgar 1shot), Gunship HM (lol), Saurfang on normal, princes HM and tries on BQL again on HM.
At Saurfang, Deathbringers Will drops. A lot of our Mainspec DPS have it so the majority of the rolls on it were Trials/Offspecs. One of our rogues rolls because as Combat it's his BiS too. As a slacker who's been averaging 1 raid a week since TOGC25 this troubles me because I'm on top on prio on EPGP and its my BiS too. It's also an item I've been building my gear around and getting it would enable me to properly pursue my gear progression without resocketing. This will also be the second time I have passed the trinket. Our system also rewards people for their attendance (not to mention we punish people for missing raids and not posting and for particularly retarded mistakes/behaviour) and that is reflected in their availability of gear to them.
Now I know this rogue. I like this rogue and to my mind the obvious thing for me to do is to pass it because his attendance is much higher than me and I reckon I'll only have 50% attendance for the next few weeks and my previous attendance was 25% for the last two months. As I'm mulling this over a minor shitstorm is breaking out on vent because I'm mulling over the decision and have told the officer doing Master Looter to continue going as the Tier pieces being rolled for don't affect the prio of anyone involved.
I got very angry. I am not a fuckwit - in the end I am in this guild for one reason and that is to see us as a whole progress. When I see people getting butthurt over loot it really annoys me given the sacrifices myself and the other officers, not to mention the longstanding members, have put into it.
Whether I choose to take this piece of loot or not, the opinion of certain loudmouths, either on vent or via whisper, mean nothing to me. If the system allows it - the items I win are mine and I have attended the relevant number of raids to win them. I will not sell my priority to the highest bidder nor be influenced by people threatening drama. If somebody wants to tell me what the fuck I should do then they can expect my response to be telling them what to do (fornicate themselves with a chainsaw).
In the end I looked at the information in front of me and I made the decision I felt best suited the Guild.
Congratulation Roguepal bff! My reward was the DPS you put out on BQL you crazy Sonofabitch. We'll get that sparkly bitch next time (0.5% wipe = painful)
/echo out
PS. Fuck the trials it's mine next week muhahahahah
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
From AQ to MH to Algalon to Valithria 25HM - Or how I wasted my Sunday.
The day began on Saturday night actually. Well technically Sunday morning because I'd done what I've been trying not to do recently, which is play under the influence after a night out. Whilst playing with a couple of my guildies I managed to talk about doing an Ulduar achievement run. Yup, some people get drunk and talk about their parental issues or their messy break up. Me, I talk about the silly extra Ulduar Achievements.
I arose late, hungover with a mouth which seemed to feel like a cat threw up in it. Considering I don't have a cat and I've stopped smoking I think something is afoot here! After some morning ablutions I checked my SAN character for auctions, then jumped on my hunter to do the daily. Ah. He's done it, so I checked my alt... and my other alt... and my horde alt. I seem to have managed to do it on all 4 and yet have no recollection. Worrying.
Guild chat pops up and soon I'm on vent chatting shit with everyone and helping someone with mic issues. After a run fails to materialise for the HM ICC10 group I grab the people at a loose end and strike forth into AQ40. My healer friend is levelling a lock and wants to come with us to MH so we agree to go AQ first so she can ding 70 and come along for some levelling gear.
AQ was hilarious. Viscidus in particular. You see this boss needs frost damage to kill him after you've got him to 1hp. You use frost attacks and he becomes frozen then the melee shatter him. 12 people, you'd have thought one of us had frost attacks. We only had 1 dk so we sat there for about 10mins while he spammed Icy touch which only the application counted for incidentally because the boss is immune to diseases. He finally freezes and everyone is afk auto attacking so he doesn't shatter. /facepalm. We abandoned it and cleared the rest without issue before hitting MH and picking up our friend's lock and couple other guildies.
Mount Hyjal is always fun. I got Echo his rep achievement after the second boss so i jumped to my Prot/ret pally to pick up tier gear. Cue the end of the run and I have the t6 set bonus. The banter on vent towards the people who can't use tears on Archimonde is always fun too :D
The trouble was that after this people were beginning to drift off and I don't think anyone wanted to do BT or Sunwell. That was when my questionable behaviour the previous night came up. I pointed out we had 2 hours till the main raid and people probably need to sort things.10mins of "oh camman Echo" and we've thrown aside such petty worries and are clearing to Algalon. It's still a tricky fight all considered - with gear the enrage element of the fight was gone completely because we had 4 dps solidly on the boss most of which were doing 7-8k. Two tanks and 3 healers who took a couple tries to get the co-ordination going. We initially had 2 healers but got an ele shaman to play his resto offspec because the DPS wasn't an issue. 1 lucky ranged dps got to kill collapsing stars. Why oh why is this always me? Once I'd sorted the rhythm it was fine in fairness - a key thing if you're ever called on to do this is set a bind to mark the star you're on as skull and then completely hold off killing it if theres a cosmic smash soon or the tanks are low. We downed it after about half an hour and my good female friend who now plays a ret pally was ridiculously happy (even if she spent 50% of the fight dead in the back hole realm).
I realise some people wont have played the fight so I thought I'd do a speed overgeneralisation of it:
This fight is beautiful and a hell of a lot of fun. The voice acting and the Lore is actually really good. Its one of the few times when I've killed something in WoW and it actually felt like my silly nelf was actually a hero as opposed to a tosspot with a bow and a wild animal who assaults innocent monsters for their things. You also get a bitching Title - Starcaller Echo on 10man or Echo, the Astral Walker on 25. I've linked the serious bosstactics below, do check out the dialog for when you defeat him. See what I mean? Listen to the sound file its really really good. I've also included a shot of the light show below. Forgive the shitty UI its from our first pulls aaaages ago.
Just after we kill him, those of us who are members get dragged into the main raid to go do some ICC25HMs. Unfortunately we had a bit of an issue due to a load of people geared and skilled enough having RL emergencies/conflicts so we had a slightly weakened raid groups that could clear normal but would struggle on HM. I offered to sit out due to my inability to raid recently as a result of a very busy job.
We weren't sure we had the raid available but after some intense officer discussion went in and knocked over festergut and putricide on normal then decided to have a crack at Valithria mainly to learn the HM fight and get some practice. 10 tries later our pallies have sorted their coordination, the hunter channel is full of positive discussion about our kiting and the raid is actively troubleshooting the things holding us back resulting in akill great success! (People keep calling it a kill - if you're killing valithria "ur doin it rong")
All in all a busy day and surprisingly rewarding day, even if now my hand hurts from over playing. I also seem to have some enthusiasm in guild for the Ulduar nerd run next week. So we're going to give it a go and knock over as many achievements as possible.
/echo out
I arose late, hungover with a mouth which seemed to feel like a cat threw up in it. Considering I don't have a cat and I've stopped smoking I think something is afoot here! After some morning ablutions I checked my SAN character for auctions, then jumped on my hunter to do the daily. Ah. He's done it, so I checked my alt... and my other alt... and my horde alt. I seem to have managed to do it on all 4 and yet have no recollection. Worrying.
Guild chat pops up and soon I'm on vent chatting shit with everyone and helping someone with mic issues. After a run fails to materialise for the HM ICC10 group I grab the people at a loose end and strike forth into AQ40. My healer friend is levelling a lock and wants to come with us to MH so we agree to go AQ first so she can ding 70 and come along for some levelling gear.
AQ was hilarious. Viscidus in particular. You see this boss needs frost damage to kill him after you've got him to 1hp. You use frost attacks and he becomes frozen then the melee shatter him. 12 people, you'd have thought one of us had frost attacks. We only had 1 dk so we sat there for about 10mins while he spammed Icy touch which only the application counted for incidentally because the boss is immune to diseases. He finally freezes and everyone is afk auto attacking so he doesn't shatter. /facepalm. We abandoned it and cleared the rest without issue before hitting MH and picking up our friend's lock and couple other guildies.
Mount Hyjal is always fun. I got Echo his rep achievement after the second boss so i jumped to my Prot/ret pally to pick up tier gear. Cue the end of the run and I have the t6 set bonus. The banter on vent towards the people who can't use tears on Archimonde is always fun too :D
The trouble was that after this people were beginning to drift off and I don't think anyone wanted to do BT or Sunwell. That was when my questionable behaviour the previous night came up. I pointed out we had 2 hours till the main raid and people probably need to sort things.10mins of "oh camman Echo" and we've thrown aside such petty worries and are clearing to Algalon. It's still a tricky fight all considered - with gear the enrage element of the fight was gone completely because we had 4 dps solidly on the boss most of which were doing 7-8k. Two tanks and 3 healers who took a couple tries to get the co-ordination going. We initially had 2 healers but got an ele shaman to play his resto offspec because the DPS wasn't an issue. 1 lucky ranged dps got to kill collapsing stars. Why oh why is this always me? Once I'd sorted the rhythm it was fine in fairness - a key thing if you're ever called on to do this is set a bind to mark the star you're on as skull and then completely hold off killing it if theres a cosmic smash soon or the tanks are low. We downed it after about half an hour and my good female friend who now plays a ret pally was ridiculously happy (even if she spent 50% of the fight dead in the back hole realm).
I realise some people wont have played the fight so I thought I'd do a speed overgeneralisation of it:
- Algalon hates people with epilepsy, so be sure to turn away at the start of the fight (It's a light show). He's also trying to tell the Titans that Azeroth is totally shit and they should blow it up. Instead of using reasoned arguements you're going to kick his bitch ass to change his mind. Great lesson to teach kids blizzard.
- You need 2 tanks and they need to manage their CDs well. Algalon also still hits like a truck and is a rogue style mob (dual wield) so your tanks will take a pounding.
- If you think you will struggle, you need EVERYONE to commit to spending the next 60mins glued to their pc chair. You only get 1hour a week to kill this guy and trust me, when some wanker goes afk after a wipe you will want to kill him.
- You also need someone who has done iron council hardmode looted the quest item then killed each of the keepers. Chances are if you're ready to do algalon you have all this.
- There are collapsing stars which are losing health. When they die they do a big aoe to all in the raid. 4 Spawn at a time and you have to make sure you kill them one by one because if they are left to their own devices they will all go off at the same time and wipe you. When they die they also create a black hole which is one of the key mechanics of the fight. If you stand in the black hole it puts you inside it (essentially a phased version of the platform) where there are elites wandering about and you take damage from an aura.
- Now every 90s Algalon does an ability called Big Bang which as you've guessed is a big explosion that hits for over 70k physical damage. To avoid this everyone jumps into a black hole so when it goes off nobody dies. However, if everyone avoids the damage Algalon casts Ascend to the Heavens that pretty much rapes everything. So you leave someone outside to take the hit - either a tank with CD's popped or a shadow priest with dispersion. You also need to move out of the black hole when you jump in because after a few seconds you get ported out to the normal realm again and if you just stand in the hole you'll get re-ported.
- The only other concept people will struggle with (provided you have a good, stylish, handsome and modest DPSer on the stars) is cosmic smash which is a big fire ability that is used every 25s and hits harder the closer you are to it. Its like a burning circle on the ground only it hits like the fist of an angry god if you're on it. Generally you can take the hit but the resulting fall will kill you, and if someone kills a star just afterwards you'll die.
- Tanks need to swap or they get ported to black hole land when they get 5 stacks of a debuff the tank does (phase punch) - generally we have the tank that isnt tanking Algalon pulling the floating Living Constellations (annoying balls that shoot you) into blackholes to close them so there aren't too many up. I like to think of it as the title sequence to 3rd rock from the sun.
- At 20% all the annoying stuff disappears and you get 4 black holes in a square around the boss that spawn adds. Simply have one of the tanks pick them up and go blow any CDs your dps have left to kill Algalon before he enrages.
This fight is beautiful and a hell of a lot of fun. The voice acting and the Lore is actually really good. Its one of the few times when I've killed something in WoW and it actually felt like my silly nelf was actually a hero as opposed to a tosspot with a bow and a wild animal who assaults innocent monsters for their things. You also get a bitching Title - Starcaller Echo on 10man or Echo, the Astral Walker on 25. I've linked the serious bosstactics below, do check out the dialog for when you defeat him. See what I mean? Listen to the sound file its really really good. I've also included a shot of the light show below. Forgive the shitty UI its from our first pulls aaaages ago.
Just after we kill him, those of us who are members get dragged into the main raid to go do some ICC25HMs. Unfortunately we had a bit of an issue due to a load of people geared and skilled enough having RL emergencies/conflicts so we had a slightly weakened raid groups that could clear normal but would struggle on HM. I offered to sit out due to my inability to raid recently as a result of a very busy job.
We weren't sure we had the raid available but after some intense officer discussion went in and knocked over festergut and putricide on normal then decided to have a crack at Valithria mainly to learn the HM fight and get some practice. 10 tries later our pallies have sorted their coordination, the hunter channel is full of positive discussion about our kiting and the raid is actively troubleshooting the things holding us back resulting in a
All in all a busy day and surprisingly rewarding day, even if now my hand hurts from over playing. I also seem to have some enthusiasm in guild for the Ulduar nerd run next week. So we're going to give it a go and knock over as many achievements as possible.
/echo out
Friday, 19 March 2010
The Drama Llama and the Fixed (well almost) Mic
First of all there's something I'd like to get off my chest. This is obviously regarding a topic many in the WoW blogging community will know about so I'll dispense with drawing further attention to it other than the below.
Crankyhealer - I enjoyed reading your blog and considering there's very few blogs I actually check up on I'm saddened by the fact you've decided to leave the blogosphere. Your idea, which you've been held over a barrel for, was a little misinformed. The way I feel you've been treated by the community, however, is wrong. I've really enjoyed your writing and I think perhaps other people could have exercised a little discretion before posting. I hope in the fullness of time you do come back. *Guilt trip*
In other news I got off my arse after c. 3 months and fixed my soundcard and mic issues. It was actually refreshing logging onto vent and being able to respond to the banter. I'm still having driver issues which is leaving my mic volume very low but I'm working to resolve this and should be shouting happily at people standing in fire in no time. Incidentally not being able to "vent" on Vent was one of the reasons I picked up blogging.
Being back on Vent also brought up a rather surprising, and possibly worrying topic. One of the newer players to join our guild mentioned the first time he heard me a couple months ago. He'd joined a Ulduar 10 achievement run to get people the Rusted Proto Drake. I'd got mine a while before so was just along for the minor "stand on one leg while playing a banjo and killing the boss" style achievements as well as lending a hand. Basically we were on Mimiron HM and people kept dying in the fire (oh god the fire). As we were explaining it, and motivating people I was using my normal tactic of trying to make it funny so that people remember it. Well apparently he wrote down what I said and had it by his pc - he can't remember it and has since lost the scrap of paper but it did involve lesbians and fire.
One of the advantages of vent is that it's so fast moving that I can unload whatever bullshit in my mind and it wont be there in posterity to embarass me unless somebody is recording - which, and i ferverently hope this is the case, is not a regular occurance in my guild. I've heard myself during bosskills and thankfully the people recording tend to keep me off of the final video (Yogg Saron I believe was a mixture of tentacle rape and anal sex jokes). Plus my voice sounds to me, when played back, like Mike Meyers was trying to do a Fat Bastard/Shrek accent and ended up bringing in some Canadian/South African. I've yet to inflict this on SAN members yet but it's only a matter of time.
As a thought for the day - Whats the stupidest shit you've ever heard anyone say on vent?
I'll start with "Wait I can use my mouse to run?" (name witheld - guildie of mine who is amusingly clueless about certain things within wow)
/echo out
Crankyhealer - I enjoyed reading your blog and considering there's very few blogs I actually check up on I'm saddened by the fact you've decided to leave the blogosphere. Your idea, which you've been held over a barrel for, was a little misinformed. The way I feel you've been treated by the community, however, is wrong. I've really enjoyed your writing and I think perhaps other people could have exercised a little discretion before posting. I hope in the fullness of time you do come back. *Guilt trip*
In other news I got off my arse after c. 3 months and fixed my soundcard and mic issues. It was actually refreshing logging onto vent and being able to respond to the banter. I'm still having driver issues which is leaving my mic volume very low but I'm working to resolve this and should be shouting happily at people standing in fire in no time. Incidentally not being able to "vent" on Vent was one of the reasons I picked up blogging.
Being back on Vent also brought up a rather surprising, and possibly worrying topic. One of the newer players to join our guild mentioned the first time he heard me a couple months ago. He'd joined a Ulduar 10 achievement run to get people the Rusted Proto Drake. I'd got mine a while before so was just along for the minor "stand on one leg while playing a banjo and killing the boss" style achievements as well as lending a hand. Basically we were on Mimiron HM and people kept dying in the fire (oh god the fire). As we were explaining it, and motivating people I was using my normal tactic of trying to make it funny so that people remember it. Well apparently he wrote down what I said and had it by his pc - he can't remember it and has since lost the scrap of paper but it did involve lesbians and fire.
One of the advantages of vent is that it's so fast moving that I can unload whatever bullshit in my mind and it wont be there in posterity to embarass me unless somebody is recording - which, and i ferverently hope this is the case, is not a regular occurance in my guild. I've heard myself during bosskills and thankfully the people recording tend to keep me off of the final video (Yogg Saron I believe was a mixture of tentacle rape and anal sex jokes). Plus my voice sounds to me, when played back, like Mike Meyers was trying to do a Fat Bastard/Shrek accent and ended up bringing in some Canadian/South African. I've yet to inflict this on SAN members yet but it's only a matter of time.
As a thought for the day - Whats the stupidest shit you've ever heard anyone say on vent?
I'll start with "Wait I can use my mouse to run?" (name witheld - guildie of mine who is amusingly clueless about certain things within wow)
/echo out
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Whiny Post Day
So apparently this is the day we're allowed to whine. At the risk of sounding like an elitist fuckhole I'm going to talk about DPS. DPS are the irresponsible children of wow. They rarely have any real responsibility other than to do "good" for their gear level dps, and not stand in bad. If they fuck up the raid might wipe, but not that second. I am a DPS and other DPS who play terribly annoy the hell out of me.
I fucking hate carrying people. I really do fail to understand how some people can grasp the relatively simple mechanics of this game. I've played typically high dps classes, and also the ones that have been considered lower and yet I've never been so godawful I've been asked to leave a raid group. I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, I routinely play with a range of players some of whom are such good players that their alts actually outplay our mains and show us up. What I'm trying to say is that if you're playing WoW then you're connected to the internet. You have access to google. Do the fucking research - there's a lot of resources online if you can't do it yourself. I'm a retard too, but I'm not a completely lazy one.
Take playing a hunter. I play semi regularly on my hunter (not as much as I want to - thanks work!) and raid occasionally. I do pug TOC25 every so often to try and pick up the belt from anub and I'm constantly thrown by how many of my class play terribly. It's not just the obvious raider pet peeves like standing in bad etc, but more their gear choices, specs and rotations. I'll quickly state I don't view BM as a "bitch" spec and to be honest generally play BM in these pugs. Now this often results in comments from the other hunters generally about how badly I'll do. Due to my lack of raiding, my gear isn't much ahead of theirs. What they've picked up in new ICC gear compares to my TOGC25 gear. Yet generally, and yes I'm generalising because you can't have a good rant without unfounded accustions, the quality of the players shitting on my BM spec is bad and I'm above them by 2-3k dps.
It happens with other classes I've played like blood/frost DK, Ele shaman, Balance druid and arms warrior. Not all of them are ez mode, yet theres always a simple few rules that people forget.
1) Gearing - Lazy gemming, lazy enchanting, stupid stat choices (expertise? are you fucking kidding me?)
2) Speccing - Don't assume what you are playing now is optimal. Read your patch notes.
3) Rotation - Again, I'm not hunterjesus here. I rely on people a lot more patient and analytical to do the theory crafting, then through a process of elimination work out what works for me.
Now of course if I can, I'd raid with my guild because I know people are there for a reason and have raiding rank because they've proven they don't need hand holding. But do you never look at the people below the tanks in Pugs and ever just think "How? How is this a problem for you?". It really does remind me of the video someone made near beginning of TBC in Gruul. They took a hunter with a macro bound to every key of their keyboard being played by someone literally bouncing their forehead off the keyboard. They still managed a respectable place on the meters as I recall.
So to all the people out there being carried. Pull your finger out. It's all your fault.
/endwhine
/echo out
I fucking hate carrying people. I really do fail to understand how some people can grasp the relatively simple mechanics of this game. I've played typically high dps classes, and also the ones that have been considered lower and yet I've never been so godawful I've been asked to leave a raid group. I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, I routinely play with a range of players some of whom are such good players that their alts actually outplay our mains and show us up. What I'm trying to say is that if you're playing WoW then you're connected to the internet. You have access to google. Do the fucking research - there's a lot of resources online if you can't do it yourself. I'm a retard too, but I'm not a completely lazy one.
Take playing a hunter. I play semi regularly on my hunter (not as much as I want to - thanks work!) and raid occasionally. I do pug TOC25 every so often to try and pick up the belt from anub and I'm constantly thrown by how many of my class play terribly. It's not just the obvious raider pet peeves like standing in bad etc, but more their gear choices, specs and rotations. I'll quickly state I don't view BM as a "bitch" spec and to be honest generally play BM in these pugs. Now this often results in comments from the other hunters generally about how badly I'll do. Due to my lack of raiding, my gear isn't much ahead of theirs. What they've picked up in new ICC gear compares to my TOGC25 gear. Yet generally, and yes I'm generalising because you can't have a good rant without unfounded accustions, the quality of the players shitting on my BM spec is bad and I'm above them by 2-3k dps.
It happens with other classes I've played like blood/frost DK, Ele shaman, Balance druid and arms warrior. Not all of them are ez mode, yet theres always a simple few rules that people forget.
1) Gearing - Lazy gemming, lazy enchanting, stupid stat choices (expertise? are you fucking kidding me?)
2) Speccing - Don't assume what you are playing now is optimal. Read your patch notes.
3) Rotation - Again, I'm not hunterjesus here. I rely on people a lot more patient and analytical to do the theory crafting, then through a process of elimination work out what works for me.
Now of course if I can, I'd raid with my guild because I know people are there for a reason and have raiding rank because they've proven they don't need hand holding. But do you never look at the people below the tanks in Pugs and ever just think "How? How is this a problem for you?". It really does remind me of the video someone made near beginning of TBC in Gruul. They took a hunter with a macro bound to every key of their keyboard being played by someone literally bouncing their forehead off the keyboard. They still managed a respectable place on the meters as I recall.
So to all the people out there being carried. Pull your finger out. It's all your fault.
/endwhine
/echo out
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
