Moved to Self Hosting!

Righty!

Its not quite finished, but I'm eager to start writting again so head on over to :

http://retribution-paladin.co.uk

Update your links :)

See you all there!

Blog Move incoming..

Hey peeps!

Just wanted to let you know that I'm moving from blogger at the moment to Wordpress and Self Hosted!!

New address will be posted in the next couple days!!

Prepare to update your blogger links! :)

Epic Fail = Me!!

Well I'm such a slacker! I've been so busy lately What with raiding and new content and Blizzcon '09 (well watching it anyway) I've forgotten that I was supposed to be blogging!!

Anyway - no empty threats for posting this time! I'll post if i can!

So lets round up the past couple months.

1 - Ulduar 25 Progression - We've had lots of problems with getting enough people together to do 25-mans therefore we're still stuck on Yogg-Saron. Really annoying - we've gotten into phase where you go into the memories rooms.

2 - Trail of the Crusader - I've really enjoyed this new content so far - all the fights are really cool and I like the way you've gotta work for the top end gear! I means Ensida etc have to wait for loot like the rest of us!! ^_^

3 - Argent Tournament - New dailys are awesome, new quests - new items - lots of cool stuff. I got my Argent Charger!

Gotten some interesting acheivements as well!!

Got my 100th Mount!!

And got my 2nd Turtle Mount!!

I'm enjoying the game again - and thing are only looking forward!!

I spent almost all weekend watching Blizzcon as well! (cant wait for my new murloc pet!! haha!)

I cant wait for the Cataclysm! :)

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder...

Wow its been almost a month since my last blog post - so I guess I better explain myself!!

Well its been a bit of a stressful time for me in RL - my G/F and I are in the middle of buying a house together - and its all completed this week so Grats Anna and I! Just gotta wait for them to finish building it!

So as I've had a lot on my plate in RL, I've not done much in WoW. In fact i didn't even log into WoW for 8 days! Somewhat of a record for me!

I took this time to chill out, play Ghostbusters on my PS3 (which is just awesome btw!!) and look back at the last 3 years of WoW that I've been playing.

I was pretty close to quitting actually - the reason for this was i was feeling sad cos I missed all my friends from the guild!!

Last night with all the raid instances reset we started at Vault of Archavon and I got my T8 legs.........Damn...


Yep...that's right - Men look stupid in dresses!!!

So its sex-change time again I'm afraid!! I just don't see why the t8 legs had to look like that - its like they got the shaman and paladin loot mixed up.....nabs....

There! That's much better!!

So as i was saying - I got the Teir 8 legs and we moved onto Ulduar where I had a good night loot wise!!

I got Worldcarver to replace my Rune Edge - Nice to have all that extra Attack Power from the strength.
Also managed to snag myself some new bracers.

So a welcome return to WoW for me.

Before my brief break we managed to down General Vezax, and have a few tries on Yoggy. They managed to get to him as well, but it wasn't a good try from what I heard. We should get to him again this week! I cant wait to get him down! Long time coming!

Did you guys notice today the downloader is going for 3.2?

Bring it on! Been playing a bit on the PTR - changes seem good! Cant wait for that!

Hope everyones ok - and Sorry for the lack of updates lately - more will be coming I promise!!

Alex

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?

Ulduar Progression and Guild Changes.

Hey peeps! Been a while since I did a big update on here about raiding, but with going to Star Trek and being ill (no not swine flu!) I've not had much spare time.

Anyway Rage have been progressing quite nicely, not as fast as some people in the guild would like, but slow and steady always wins the race as they say.

In 10 man Ulduar we've cleared 9 bosses: Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002, Iron Council, The big dude with the arms, Auraiya, Hodir, and Fraiya.

In 25 man Ulduar we're not so far, but getting there all the above aside from Auraiya, Hodir and Fraiya.

So far its been fun! I've loved all the fights - even given some of the wipe nights we've had.

I've been lucky here and there and managed to get some nice upgrades so far, the latest being this baby!!!!

Rune Edge
Two Hand Sword
632-949 Dmg Speed 3.40
(232.5 damage per second)
+121 Agility
+120 Stamina
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 86.
Equip: Increases your attack power by 160.
Equip: Increases your armor penetration rating by 70.

Lovely upgrade for my Betrayer, and finally nice to have a sword again. I hate having axe's. It always seems like such a waste of my nice expertise Bonus.

The Plate chest dropped too "Steelbreaker's Embrace" but I let that go to the other ret-paladin that joined us recently as i would loose a LOT of hit rating swapping out that. I'm saving my dkp for the tier 8.5 Chest. That way I'm not loosing too much Hit Rating.

The Iron Council is an annoying fight to be sure - the tanks take a lot of damage. Us paladins had to work out a rotation for Hand of Sacrifice if ever a tank wound up getting the boss in the rune that increases damage by 50%. We had almost 2 nights of wipes there - very frustrating stuff.

In other news I'm now the Paladin Class Leader in Rage! Our last one has quit his paladin so concentrate on his Horde Hunter. Good luck to him! Cheers Rovell! So this is lots of veteran meetings and sorting out who's doing what and helping make guild decisions! Interesting to see the behind the scenes stuff in a Raid guild.

Other projects I'm working on at the moment, in case any of you have been nosing around on my Armory page are as follows:

I finished the Argent Tournament on Monday!! Crusader Firelight was my 27th Title!

I'm also working on "the Insane" title. Here's where I am with that:

Bloodsail Buccaneers -11999/12000 Honored - Completed
Ravenholdt - Currently Revered - Incomplete.
Shen'dralar - Currently Friendly - Incomplete.
Darkmoon Fair - Currently Friendly - Incomplete.
Steamwheedle Cartel - Currently 8000/36000 Hated with most - Very Incomplete!!

This is taking me a long time!! I've killed literally thousands of Syndicate mobs, Southsea Pirates and Wastewander Pirates, and I've got thousands more to kill!

I've been slowly buying all the Rogue/Swords/Mages decks from the Auction house and getting my darkmoon rep up that way but this is also very slow. Also been gathering items for libram hand ins for Shen'dralar rep. Its going to be expensive, and its going to take ages, but I want this title!! Wish me luck!

PS - I'll hit the exalted title in 2 rep factions time as well! (40 factions to exalted)

New Star Trek Movie

Hey guys, just wanted to make a quick post about the new Star Trek Movie!

Don't worry - no spoilers here!

Some friends and I drove to London last night to an IMAX Theatre to see the film.

My god.....this is without a doubt one of the best, if not THE best, film I've seen in years!

Seriously - even if you're not a Star Trek fan, go see this! Its just brilliant!

Worth Every Penny!

That's all!! More Warcraft next time!

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?