Upcoming 3.2 Retribution Changes..

Ok...so the dust has settled a bit, and I've calmed down a little from reading the initial stuff.

So I'm not going to go over everything again - most of the big hitters have already nit picked everything to the nth degree.

Anyway I wanna make a few comments on a few of the things coming in 3.2

So Seal of the Martyr/Blood has passed to the great pile of discarded abilities in the sky, and I'm thankful for this. Its been a liability since the day it was created. This change should have happened when Blizzard gave the Alliance the seal. Instead all it did was make Seal of Command worthless other than a leveling dps talent.

The new Seal of Command seems to be interesting - "This seal now deals 36% weapon damage on every swing" Interesting indeed. "All melee attacks deal additional Holy damage." So Command will do damage on every single melee attack: Crusader Strike, Divine Storm and White Damage. Guaranteed! I imagine this'll get nerfed eventually.

To be honest considering Blizzard said they were going to be revamping Retribution, I didn't think sorting out Seal of Command would be the answer. I guess we all had delusions of greater and grander things.

One question about Exorcism. They've put back the cast time on this, and given Art of War the ability to make it instant again. Pointless. This just gives Mages another spell to counter. Making us even more useless in PvP. The only way this would be a good change is to remove the cool down on the spell.

I just wanna get into the PTR. Like NOW.

Mimiron & General Vezax

Hey guys, sorry for the semi lack of posts, but I took a week and a bit off raiding as I had a week off work to chill out and relax - You know - Made some time to do Man things like working on my car and playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero.

Anyway Rage managed to slip past the elusive Hodir and Thorim and also Mimiron.
Thankfully on Monday night I was back just in time to see Mimiron downed on the 2nd try.

Now I'd heard Mimiron was a bit of a pain, but while the fight is reasonably complicated, it didn't seem very hard compared to other fights we've had in Ulduar thus far.

Mimirons 4 phase are a real blast! If you've not seen the fight be prepared for some fun and I imagine frustration!

So on Monday night and again last night we had various tries on the big man:

General Vezax

This is a fairly straight forward fight from a melee point of view thankfully unless you happen to be a death knight - in which case you're likely to be on deathgrip duty helping the ranged classes with the green mana goo!

Our best try thus far was to get him to 44% Its a long fight and you really need your healers to be top of their game.

Tonight I'm raid leading our clearance night in Ulduar! Wish me luck!! *gulp* This is my first time raid leading a 25-man, thankfully we wont be doing anything new here (well I hope not!) and it will be a nice experience! Even if the other officers were laughing! Bring it on!

Figure Print Arrives!

Hey guys! Just wanted to let you all know of a couple of really cool things that I've gotten!

Yesterday, after almost a month of waiting, my Figureprint arrived!

Its way more awesome than I had ever imagined it would be - Check it out:





Awesome isn't it! I went for my Tier 6 gear with a bit of my Ulduar gear thrown in for good measure! That sword is just massive!!

Also I blew all my money and bought myself a Chopper!!

Vroom Vroom!!! Loving the Chopper! And I only had to spend 12,500 on the official mats from Storm Peaks. Big Thanks to Umari from the Guild for stumping up 11 Titansteel Bars!!

Thanks Dude!! <3

Thorim Down!

Hey peeps! Wow! Isn't the weather just lovely? Shame I'm cooped up at work all day!

Finally Rage managed to down Thorim last night after a couple of hours of tries.

We went into Ulduar last night with Freya in our sights first. It was a messy start to the raid with a couple of wipes on trash, nerves were frayed, but we pulled together and took her down after 3/4 tries.

After joking about going to Mimiron next (which was hilarious as almost the entire raid bombarded our GM with "NOOESS!! We cant go Mimiron they're nerfing him tomorrowz!!!" much to his annoyance) we move to Thorim.

We did 5 tries where I was out in the main trash room. After the 2 tries I asked to be made raid assist and was then marking the healer types with a raid mark - to assist the dps. This made a huge difference in nuking down the evokers. I really recommend if you're having problems with this to get someone competent to do this. It really helps when all you can see is a mash of players and NPC's and AOE affects going off all around you.

After the first batch of tries I was asked to move into the gauntlet. 3 tries later Thorim was down.

Lets break down the fight:

Phase 1 - the raid run into the room and clear the combatants and the giant worm. As soon as the last mob is down the lever to the left of the room will be activated leading to...

Phase 2 - gather 2 healers 1 tank, 2 CC'ers and 2 more dps.

Our Gauntlet group consisted of;

Resto shaman - Healer/CC
Resto Druid - Healer
2x Ret Paladins - DPS
1x Prot Warrior - Tank
1x Mage - DPS/CC

This was what we found to be optimal for us - this may not be the case, but should be a good guide of what to do.

People on the gauntlet have to run down the corridor and fight there way to Thorim. They will face;

Pull 1 - 1 Healer, and 3 DPS NPC's - CC 2 of the DPS NPC's and nuke the healer, then kill adds.

Pull 2 - -1 Healer and 3 DPS NPC's - CC 2 of the DPS NPC's and nuke the healer, then kill adds.

Pull 3 - Giant War Golem - This guy will be firing fireballs(ish) at the party right up to the point you engage him - AVOID THESE AT ALL COSTS.

Pull 4 - 2 Healer NPC's and 2 DPS and 1 Stone Iron Giant. This can be really tricky to pull off - we CC'd the healer types - cleared the smaller NPC's then the Giant, then returned to kill the last 2 CC'd Mobs.

Then the group runs to Thorim and jumps down to join the rest of the raid.

While the gauntlet group is doing its thing (the faster the better) the rest of the raid will be dealing with wave after wave of dwarves. With each wave there will be a Dark Run Evoker - this guy is a seriously good healer and needs to be nuked down as a priority. Assign a group of people specifically for this task (and if possible get one of them to mark the mob) It really helps if you have a target macro to help you find him.

There are some larger mobs that have to be tanked away from the raid due to AOE whirlwind he does that can kill a clothie pretty quick. Melee should stay away from these.

Phase 3 starts when Thorim jumps down once the gauntlet team have cleared the gauntlet. This phase is pretty much a tank and spank with 1 exception. Thorim will occasionally turn and run a small electrical charge to a ranged member of the raid - shortly there after he does a Cone-Effect Chain Lightning with roughly a 60 degree radius.
This starts off not doing very much damage, but as the fight progresses gets higher and higher. (I was hit once by a 26k charge, one of our rogues was hit for 54k the same fight later on) Don't let yourself get caught in the chain lightning. Its a real pain and will wipe the raid.

So there you go - once you've gotten into the rhythm its easy as pie - but there are lots of things that can generally cause a wipe. If anyone is killed during phase 2 - especially if its one of the tanks - its a wipe. If either the tank or one of the healers is killed in the gauntlet team its a wipe.

So be safe, work hard and you got him!

Good luck!

Thorim has Rage on Farm

Hey peeps!

As Doxa was kind enough to enquire as to our guilds progress on Thorim I thought I'd make a quick post to answer him!

Well as the title suggests we're having a few problems on getting that dude down! Quite literally.

Getting him down off that pedestal is a real job! Either the guys going through the gauntlet wipe or the group outside cant keep up with the number of mobs spawning and wipe just as the last mob is pulled by the gauntlet.

We've tried lots of different combo's here - from putting more people in the gauntlet to putting more people outside.

I've been in both sides of the tries - starting with staying in the main room and fighting off the hordes of iron dwarves that come - it can be very overwhelming at times - and woweee the chaos that can ensue as people are just running around like blue-ass-flies trying to stay in control.... and its not much more fun in the Gauntlet room. Pull aggro off the tanks and you're dead! Thankfully hand of Salvation is a real godsend here! The gauntlet itself is not terribly difficult to start off with but when you get to those stairs...oh my god...you really need to be with a fearless tank who is able to take more than his fair share of punishment.

I've never been more scared to use Divine Storm in all my life!

Its just a frustrating thing - I guess many people will say we clearly don't have the DPS required yet to get past him. I guess there is always going to be a gear check with some bosses.

Good news though is all other bosses are on farm mode more or less aside from Hodir and Thorim (we've not tried Mimiron on 25-man yet but I heard he's a nightmare!!)

This weekend I'm going to try get me that Red Proto-Drake! I've wanted that bad boy for a while now and only need 7/8 more achievements to get it! 5 more Mounts left then all I need is the Tournament mounts to get my Mountain of Mounts reward of a very sexy Blue Dragonhawk!

So sadly Doxa we too are also headbutting the same wall as you!

Freya Down.

Hey peeps! I'm trying to post some more - need to get back into the swing of things after having nothing really to write about for ages.

So Wednesday Rage started again and cleared 6 bosses in Ulduar Heroic in 1 night (unfortunately I was not present as I was at the cinema seeing Star Trek for the 2nd time!!)

Last night we went and had tries on Freya, and at 11:30 Server time she finally went down.

The first half of the night I was on DPS, and we had problems with the 4 medium sized mobs that spawned being tanked, so I switched my gear out and activated my tank spec (go go gadget tank!) I was tasked with helping out with the tanking on those adds.

It was interesting for me, I had lots of fun doing that, and it was great finally getting her down. That fight is seriously harder on 25 man compared to 10 man.

Monday night we'll probably try Thorim and Hodir again. (first time on Thorim) Wish us luck!

Ulduar Progression

Hey guys! Hope all are well and still rocking the new content!

Rage's progression is as always slow and steady compared to some of you guys out there, but we're doing our best in the face of adversity.

Last night we cleared Auriaya and had a few good tries on Hodir in 25-man.

Auriaya is a bit of a nightmare and its all about the raid being able to keep mobile if the void zones spawn in rubbish places. This fight reminds me a bit of Prince in Karazhan with the infernals spawning all over the place.

Hodir on the other hand is best described in 1 word: Chaos.

Everyone has to keep moving all the time or they take frost damage, added to the fact you have to keep out of the runes on the floor in case you get knocked back by cave-ins. Its a real intensive fight and people have to be on the ball or its FAIL time. Also he's got 32 million Hit Points.....that's just unreasonable!! Damn you Blizzard!

So that's all the news from a raiding point of view. I've slowly been continuing my rep grind for the Insane title, but nothing massive to report there, other than hitting honored with Darkmoon Faire. I've started the Argent Tournament on my Druid - which is fun, and adds a nice source of income as well.

I'm planning on leveling another toon to 80 just so I can do these quests again maybe - it depends on what happens when 3.2 comes out.

I also managed to get my 75th non-combat pet in game and got my Fawn pet in the post, which was cool! Also last night in VoA Emalon was kind enough to drop the Grand Black War Mammoth!! Somehow I managed to win the roll as well!! /grin

That's my 85th mount in game - 15 to go for the Dragonhawk mount you get at 100.

Good Times!

Have any of you guys completed any WoW milestones with regards to content or achievements?