Thursday, 27 August 2009

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! :)

Monday, 24 August 2009

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! :)

Thursday, 16 July 2009

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

Friday, 19 June 2009

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.

Wednesday, 17 June 2009

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!

Saturday, 6 June 2009

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

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

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!