Ulduar - XT-002 Deconstructor DOWN and explained!

Hey guys'n'gals! Hope all of you have managed to get your Noblegarden acheivements done in quite time as we all know childrens week starts on Friday!


Anyways on Rage's 2nd night of tries we managed to clear the Deconstructor - and pretty early on last night it has to be said! We almost had him the night before but had a few people DC in Greece - on of their ISP's dropped out for 20 minutes which pretty much ended the raid as it was late anyway.

Its quite a fun fight, and Deconstructor's voice is pretty funny, with 2 phases:

Phase 1 - The tank positions the boss with his back to the raid right infront of the stairs and after a few seconds to allow him time to get sufficient aggro the DPS set off and we're full swing into the fight. During the fight random people will be afflicted with either;

- Gravity Bomb - This nasty debuff doesnt have a DOT effect, but if you get it - move away from the raid as after a few seconds it pulls everyone within 10/15 feet of you to where you are - just intime for you to explode causing a lot of damage to you and them.

- Light Bomb - This even more nasty debuff does i think about 3.5k damage per tick to you and anyone within range of you. MOVE FAST---->

Phase 2 - Deconstructor decides to have a sleep and his heart pops out of his chest. His heart has 10 million HP and your damage is increased by 100% against the heart. Whatever health you take off the heart is removed directly from Deconstructor, so this is a really good time to pop all trinkets/cool downs and heroism etc. During this phase various robots come to attack the raid and have to be tanked - or they move to the boss and if they get to range they heal him for 60,000 HP. There are also Bomb Bots - ranged dps need to deal with these and stay at max range as they explode causing 16-20k damage on plate. Phase 1 then starts again.

We got deconstructor down with 3 phase 2's last night - obviously as our gear increases it will get quicker and quicker. We were popping heroism on the 3rd phase 2.

Something interesting happened as well - have any of you noticed how much Judgement of Light is healing for? On the try when we downed deconstructor I was 3rd dps overall and 1st on the healing meters!!! WTF? I guess blizzard got something right! (ok most of it was over healing, but hey its better than nothing) my Judgement was ticking for 850-1000 on everyone in the raid when they hit the boss! Crazy!

So as a reward the boss was kind enough to drop these for me:

Clockwork Legplates
Binds when picked up
Legs Plate
2054 Armor
+106 Strength
+169 Stamina
Blue Socket
Socket Bonus: +4 Strength
Durability 120 / 120
Requires Level 80
Equip: Improves hit rating by 57.
Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 76.

So that's a nice bonus for me! Cost me though! 550 DKP! Damn those Death Knights!!

So far I've really enjoyed 3.1 - the Tournament is fun and I cant wait for the next phase to start, although from what I've read it wont be starting till the next major content patch. Ulduar is new and fresh, and feels way more of a challenge.

For me this is the first time we've had to work hard on downing any bosses since the pre-wrath patch came out and nerfed all the tier 6 raid content.

Firelight the Noble

Hey guys! You're all loving the Noblegarden today!! Isn't it cool!!

LOL!

Here's a couple of pics of me on my epic journey across Tanaris and Un'goro!


It only took me a few hours to get the meta achievement done - I'm glad it was pretty easy I was sweating quite a lot that I wouldn't get the Love is Around meta due to terrible RNG achievements. The only thing plaguing me this time around is the tuxedo pants! I'm sure they'll come!

Are all of you peeps having fun? What really gets my goat is people are supposed run around looking but instead they seem set on just camping spawn spots. Boring! I've been keeping with the run around as a rabbit nabbing eggs from the campers wherever possible!

Ok about the last post I made - I guess my idea of what they should have done with Death Knights was a bit more or less what people expected. That's how I wish they'd done it! Like it or loath it - it was just a bit of fun!

The Argent Tournament presses on also! I'm now championed with Stormwind and Exodar! Darnassus next.

So bring on Children's Week!!

Happy Egg Hunting!

Next Hero Class: Unholy Paladins.

Hey guys - Just been reading all the blog posts about the nerf we've received to Exorcism as of 3.1.1 that went live yesterday/today (US/EU)

Now in the week since 3.1 came out I've not done any pvp. Not a sausage! (not including jousting!!) But we all knew this was going to come - a day or so after looking at my exorcism damage i said to one of our prot-a-dins "Watch them nerf it next week..."

Low and behold its done. Thankfully not in PvE phew!

Anyway I read a comment on Tim's latest post over at Suicidal Zebra from Dallana:

"Ever consider that it's more often than not, Holy's fault that Ret gets
hurt?"

Well that got me thinking to the future...something that blizzard could offer us Ret Paladins...

No-one wants to switch mains - not really - you loose all that hard work you put in to get your achievement's done, and all that awesome collectible loot and fun stuff.

So I came up with an alternative. This will stop all the game breaking nerf's and bring something new to the game that people will love:

Unholy Paladins.

An optional quest chain would be opened up by paladins wishing to turn their backs on the light and move away from that which was held so dear for so long.

This quest line would take you on a journey of discovery....from one end of Azeroth to another - bringing you back to your ultimate decision to become a paladin. This is a far throw from what happened to Death Knights...this is something different.

Quest by quest each of your main abilities would be corrupted from what we know it as now to their new versions - the dark twisting magic that begins to envelop you the deeper you go on your journey slowly changing the very way you perceive the world - things appear darker, more uninviting.

Your veins begin to pulsate with the hatred for all things holy - the mana burns from your body and a new power system call Unholy Power starts to take over...

The culmination of this quest line is an epic battle between you and your Unholy brothers in arms and the Priests and Paladins that are fighting to battle the corruption from within their very souls.

There would only be 1 talent tree - this is a pure DPS class with raid utilities similar to regular paladins, but wholly different at the same time.

Lets look at some of our new/changed abilities:

Curse of Blood. This 1 hour buff grants you with something similar to combining Seal of
the Martyr and Blessing of Might and Kings - All stats are increased by 15% and all direct melee attacks have a chance to do damage based on a percentage of attack power multiplied by weapon dps.

Damned Crusader Strike. Our old Crusader Strike's powers are taken and twisted. An instant attack that causes 115% weapon damage + 33% Attack Power and silences the target for 2 seconds. 6 Second Cool Down.

Unholy Storm. Divine Storm has a new ability - As well as hitting 4 targets around the Unholy Paladin for 110% weapon damage it also does this as unholy damage and is not resistible. 10 Second Cool Down.

The old seals and judgement system is gone. Curse of Blood above folds our only useful seal into its blessing and no long does any damage to the user.

Unholy Damnation. This is an instant cast ability that hits the target for 200% weapon damage. This ability also heals you for 10% of the damage dealt - 8 second Cool Down.

Desecration. Like Consecration, but better - this ability does not stay where you pop it - instead it follows the Unholy Paladin - 8 second duration/cooldown.

Our heals have changed as well - Flash of Light becomes Flash of Darkness and Holy Light becomes Unholy Darkness. Core abilities stay the same, but add a HoT affect upon critical which heals for 33% of the amount healed over 5 seconds.

As mentioned earlier the mana bar is gone - its been replaced with an Unholy Power bar. (sounds like some sort of chocolate snack!) This starts empty like a rage/runic power bar and increases depending on how many abilities are used in a certain period of time. Once at 100% your damage is increased for 15 seconds by 30% at the end of this time your bar returns to 0 and you have to work your spells again. Filling your bar to 100% should take about 2 minutes creating a kind of auto avenging wrath every 2 minutes but is controlable by not doing certain abilities that grant Unholy Power.

It just an idea, a fantasy I've had - something I'd love to see implemented as a viable option for Paladins who truly want to dish out some retribution.

It kinda all sounds a bit Death Knightish, but with a twist - there's not tanking nonsense here - its pure dps with some raid utility added in to make us useful in raids.

Can you think of any more interesting new spells to add or change?

Dual Spec'd Up & Argent Tournament

Hey Guys'n'Gals (are there really any girls reading this?)

So just wanted to touch base with a few things I've been doing in-game recently.

So I've been beavering away at the Argent Tournament and this morning I made it to Champion of Stormwind and I'm now "Firelight of Stormwind" Another title to add to the long list of titles in my repartee! (over 20 now I think!)

I'm now going to have to start the arduous task of saving up tokens for the mounts/pets. I think I need to save up 140 per faction and 250 for the flyer.

I think I'm going to switch factions and champion each of them as it only seems to take 8 days to do that and you get a bonus 10 tokens - unless its more profitable to do the dailys (5 tokens per day?)

I only just managed to get the champion beaten before I had to leave for work, so I've not had a proper chance to weigh up the options and make a proper decision. I'll have a play tonight and see whats what!

Also over the weekend I finally got round to picking up the dual spec and last night I got my chance to put it to practise!

I've gone protection for my alternate spec. I've got mostly all 25-man tanking gear so I'm over the defense cap.

So late last night one of the guildies is "Looking for a tank for heroic" I whisper him that I'll come - I need the practise!

Thinking it was going to be Halls of Stone - somewhere nice and relatively easy we ended up going to Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom. One of the harder instances.
Bearing in mind I've not properly tanked an instance since I was level 70 and even then I was only tanking 5-mans and not heroics, I did well. (so i was told anyway!)

There were some difficult pulls in there - and my rotation seems to wipe my mana pool pretty darn quickly - need to talk to the other pally tanks in there to see whats what with regards to that - cos I was blowing mana pots like there was no tomorrow, but we didn't wipe and only once or twice did a couple of the dps get killed (although not my fault thankfully!!)

I tell you what - doing that insanity bit in there as a protection paladin was really painful.

I was able to stay alive for each of the splits but it was impossible for me to kill anyone due to the 2 priests that were constantly healing each other and the rest of the team. Thankfully the rest of the team came to my aid when they'd cleared their mobs.

I was glad of the practise to be honest because I've kinda put my name down as a possible tank for tonight's 25-man raid in Ulduar (razorscale) to our GM, Kuta. He said it would be good due to the lack of tanks we have signed. The Pressure is ON!

Ulduar First Impressions

Hey peeps - wow did I have a fantastic night last night!

So around about 5pm I logged onto WoW and spent a little while setting up my talent build for raiding, and so far it seems to be holding up. I went for a pve/pvp build - taking a few things from the ret tree that are considered pvp talents. I cant remember the exact build I'll post it later maybe!

Anyway then I got my addons sorted - WoWmatrix is gone - long live Curse Client. If you've not read about wowmatrix then i suggest you go find the article thats floating about.

Anyway I shed a couple of addons that weren't up to date, and logged in - all seemed OK - I didn't have any problems at all really. Of the ones that weren't updated they all still worked OK.

So I went up to the Argent Tournament and started the quests up there, managed to get all that finished including all the dailys and all of the first part of the black knight quest line - not sure when I get to pick that up again - time will tell.

Our Guild Master had postponed the raid to 9pm server time - giving me plenty of time to prep - get some pots made up etc and get everything ready for Ulduar.

I also popped down to booty bay to pick up my sandbox tiger!! Cute!

Anyway I flew up to Storm Peaks and entered the instance.

When the loading screen disappeared I was at the graveyard outside Scarlett Monastery??

Double You Tee Eff!!?!??!?

Grrr - good thing the hearthstone is only 30 minutes now!

Hearthed back - only to be faced with "World Server is Down!" Oh here we go!! We're all ready to go into Ulduar and we cant!!! /cry

OK 5 mins later the server was back up - and we entered. 30/40 mins later and after the Raid leaders decided who is going to be in what vehicles we started the event.

1 word for you...

AWESOME!

I was driving one of these bad boys:

I love it!! I cant wait to have a go on the other vehicles next week! The motorbike looks fun!

Oh and button 6 is hilarious! When you get that warning up on the screen saying "Ambister had moved to the catapult" hilarity ensues!!!

After we wiped the 2nd time the raid leaders were changing tactics again and the Death Knight Class Leader came to me and said;

"Fire, launch me!!!"

"Woot??? Where?"

"At the boss!!!"

" LOOOOOOOOOOL!!! OK!

So I positioned myself in the middle of the group so no-one would see and Patoooeeee!!! Archael gets fired at the boss!! I'm already turned around and running away as fast as my chariot can take me! Me and Arch (dave) were in stitches!!

So on the 4th try we got Flame Leviathan down - I don't think any of us wanted to get him down we were having so much fun in there! What a wicked cool fight!

Can you tell I was excited about it?

After we downed him it was Raid Over. We noticed we had Wintergrasp and decided to run down and have a look at the new boss in there, but we only had 20 people willing to come. We managed to take down Archavon, and all I'm willing to say about our 3 attempts at the new guys is OUCH! 26k chain lightning? Trash mobs that wiped 1 third of the raid?

To quote my hero Strongbad: "Holy Crap!"

So tonight we press forward in Ulduar - I'm just wishing the day away!! Bring on Home Time!!

Ulduar Awaits....

So you lucky beggars in the US already have Ulduar and I Imagine we'll see world firsts later tonight.

I've just seen the intro to Ulduar and WoW! I cannot wait. I got that shiver down my spine again as the piece came to the end. You know the one? The one you got when you watched the Wrathgate video, or the one you got when they released the WotLK trailer.

I hope the patch meets up to my expectations and is as the thing I need to get me interested in the game again. I think a lot of people are feeling similar things to me with regards to the current content (3.0.X)

I'm not going to go over what 100 other blogs have gone over the patch notes with a fine tooth comb.

So fingers crossed peeps!

I will post a more comprehensive blog-post later in the week once I've had a chance to play the patch a bit more and give you some news on my current Rep-Grind Project.

See you at the Argent Tournament!!

Guild Drama Part 2 - The Aftermath

Firstly let me say thanks to all who commented on my last post - its good to know that there are a few people out there with something to add to this dilemma.

I'm going to start by answering a few people now;

@ Peregrine - Thanks for the support buddy - I'm sure things will be OK once 3.1 comes next week(maybe)

@ Ithilien - You of course were right - Just stopping wasn't the right thing to do, more on that later. Lots of guilds in game seem to be having this problem - Blizzard made the game too easy on one hand then ridiculously stupid-hard on the other. But nothing that a little focus can overcome. I didn't stop raiding - I just started using my Druid to raid instead just to make the experience feel fresher - Ignoring the plate items and getting some nice t7.5 upgrade for my Boomkin.

@ Barrista - Like you I've been to pretty much every raid from day one - There were not many of us that did that 10-man content but I was there a few weeks after Wrath came out gearing up further. It can be difficult carrying people through the raid content now, but it feels good none the less knowing that most of those people will stay with us. (And there will be some scumbags that just use the guild as a stepping stone to gear up then leave to go elsewhere....I hate those people....)

@ Tay - I feel your pain friend - Making the decision to drop out of the raid cos so many people are cheesing you off is hard, but sometimes its all you can do to stop you from tearing your hair out.

@ Darrtanus - I've not been into Oculus for at least 2 months...everyone hates it! You know why? Cos its one of the only 5-mans in Wrath that requires a lot of skill from everyone in the group. I would never PuG Oculus. I desperately want to go in there though to get my heroic achievements done.

So thanks to you peeps - love you long time!

Anyway lets fill you in on whats been happening. Rage lost a few key members from all of this drama, including our Raid Leader Carinthalas. He wanted to be in a progression guild...and apparently Sarth +3D is what he wanted to complete - personally while I do want that title and the mount I cannot see the point really - there's no more loot, but you get to say "Look! Our guild are leet enough to do Sarth+3D!" and that can mean a lot to people.

But lets not forget that we are a progression guild - we've had problems with bosses in the past, but nothing a little work cant pull us through.

We also lost a couple of member who just seemed to be in the guild to leech loot and not add anything to our group. This burns me off so much. So farewell to you.

We've started recruiting again and have gotten in some really good people it seems and our GM is in talks with another raid guild that seem to be in a similar place to us, about a possible merger - Rage soaking up their best members and ditching the rubbish. I wont mention the guild name on here in case anyone is reading.

We'll see how that pans out - We're all wary of guild mergers - but given the losses we've had lately from people leaving or quitting WoW it seems necessary if we are to progress in Ulduar.

Well Ulduar is a week away it seems so we shall see what happens.

Good Luck To Us All....

Edit: Does anyone know or have you heard anything about the new dances we were promised?

Guild Drama..

Hey Guys! Hope all are well and getting excited about Ulduar coming soon.

So I guess by the title of the post you've guessed what I'm going to be writing about tonight.

I'm sure we've all been through Guild Drama at one time or another during the course of playing WoW and tonight was the first time I've had to deal with it for a long time.

The guild has been having a few issues lately getting enough people to form 25-man raids. People seem to be burning out a little on the current content being to easy or something.

We've had a few core veterans leave due to real life issues as well and that hasn't helped either.

So tonight's raid formed up and we were 5 men down for Naxx. So we pulled together what we had and said we'd do the Achievement for doing Naxx with less than 21. All was going fine, we cleared the Spider wing with no problems one shotting all 3 bosses and then we moved to Patchwerk. Now the last few weeks we've had issues with the melee group getting Hateful Strikes and nearly always this would lead to a wipe. It was so bad one time I resigned myself to ret-healing - standing at the back and helping spam Flash of Light one of the tanks.

The biggest problem we seem to have is Chain Heal from our Resto Shamans. This and the extra things resto Shamans have that cause instant crit heals on raid members in range.

As a melee dps its really frustrating. No-one like wiping - especially if we cant even get him down in under 3 minutes for the achievement.

So tonight this was the straw that broke the horses back for me and after the 4th wipe on patchwerk I left the raid and logged off.

I gave myself sometime to cool off and popped over to my hordie and had a chat with Tim over at Suicidal Zebra. Some minutes later I logged back onto my banker toon and whispered one of my guildies who was leading the raid tonight. He had told our resto shaman and the rest of the melee to cool off or he'd kick people from the guild and then disbanded the raid.

I logged onto Firelight, said that I wont be threatened into shutting up when I knew what was wrong and what had to be done to stop the melee from being killed and /gquit.

I then had the majority of guild members whispering and our GM and I had a long chat on ventrillo. A few minutes later I was back in the guild, but he said something interesting;

"Its no one persons fault that all of this is happening, its Blizzards fault for causing people to get burnt out so quickly"

This made sense to me - I mean why would someone leave the guild (our main raid leader) stating that due to our lack of ability to gather 25 people together and not being able to kill Sartharion with 3 Drakes up.

After all of this I've decided to take a raiding break with my Paladin till 3.1 is out. I'm going to log on and play still, but I'm going to level up some alts and try some other things - probably end up doing some 10-mans with my Boomkin.

As I said before we've all been affected one way or another by guild drama, all we can do is try to pull ourselves through it, learn from it, and move on.