Recently in Raiding Category

Today has been a day of luck and warlocky goodness.

Firstly, I did some questing and some auctions sold and I finished raising the money for my epic flying.  I'd already made myself a new carpet.

Then I went to 10-man Archavon with a random group.  A month or so ago I went there on my druid and three hunter pieces dropped in 25-man, the sole hunter got them all.  I'd never really forgiven the place for that ... until today!  Both the gloves and the robe for warlocks dropped and I was the only one!

After that, I went to Strathholme in Caverns of Time and although we were a few minutes off getting the timed run, I finished getting revered with the Kirin Tor and got the badges I needed, so I picked up the Flameheart Spell Scalpel and the Ward of the Violet Citadel.

Pretty Screenshot!


It's a pain that I won't be raiding with my usual group anytime soon though, as I have to stay up way too late to do Naxx with them.  I got sick last week, I think because I was so tired and cold so I'm waiting until the weather improves and I have time off work before I do anymore raiding.

I'm trying to find a good afternoon raiding group on AD but had no luck so far!

Short post, I'm off work sick and feel pretty bad.

What's going on at the moment?

- Working on getting my warlock's epic flying.  I'm at about 1500 gold, with maybe 2000g worth of stuff on the AH that may or may not sell.

- Working on some random achievements, I'm hoping to get some more books for Higher Learning after the rolling restarts today.

- Instancing on my druid and my warlock.  Did CoS again a few days ago, managed the timed run for about the 4th or 5th time with some friends, and got my drake!  It helped that three of them already had it.

Obligatory pretty dragon picture:

It's not Sapphriron.  It's not Kel'thuzad.  Nope.  It's not even frogger!

It's lag.

My raiding group started a 25-man Naxx last night.  We went in and started on spider wing with no problem, got to the Grand Widow and we had some lag issues but nothing too too bad.  The priest had a little trouble MC'ing the adds with his lag but we did it.   Maexxna - We had some lag issues but again, not so bad we couldn't do it.  It got a little hairy at times with spells taking too long and such.

On to finish the wing and then hit Patchwerk, who we've downed before. 

WHAM.  Terrible, terrible lag.  My Quartz casting bars were virtually full red for latency.  DPS couldn't use special attacks, healers were just guessing as to when the tanks' health bars went down.  I just alternated between regrowth and nourish, and kept up a rotation of sorts.  We got him to 10% when he enraged.  I snuck back into a corner and shadowmelded.  We tried him again but it was the same thing, so we decided to call it a night.  The only times when the lag cleared up at all was when we had several people dead. 

It was terrible!  According to the forums it's a known issue, so here's hoping it gets cleared up, because we're stuck until it does.

I got to got to Naxxaramas 10 for the first time on Saturday, and despite being up until an ungodly time of the morning, I had fun!  I did Archavon 25 the other day in a PUG, and that's all the Wrath raiding I've done so far.

I got some nice new gloves from Naxx.  I like the place, nice trash:boss ratio (that is, not much trash!).  The gargoyles that heal themselves if you don't burn them down quickly are irritating (especially at 3am) but on the whole it's a fun place.  I'm looking forward to doing more there.

Here's some screenies.  I did miss getting screenies when we killed Grand Widow and Noth the Plaguebringer, unfortunately.

This is mostly for Maelwyn/Admosmori as he didn't see it.

The background: We were running a last 70 hoorah in Kara last night for fun and to get some people levelling gear.  We were doing a quick loot system, where people had 5 seconds to roll on an item.

The NPC decided that Admosmori wasn't being authorative enough.





And on an expansion update: I have Wrath downloaded and installed, and now I'm just frantically refreshing my e-mail every 10 seconds in the hopes that my Dad has magically got the delivery and e-mailed me the code while he's probably at work.  You never know.

I hopped on briefly to see who was about and most of my best playing buddies are on and exploring Northrend for the first time.  I logged back off, it was too painful!

Wow.  From there being not much information about Wrath of the Lich King, it's suddenly exploded into a wealth of it.  I'm not going to respost everything, just talk about some of my favourite things.

Death Knights

I'm really looking forward to making a Death Knight, and it sounds like the class will be a blast to play.  I think my poor warrior is going to get neglected as the DK may replace her as my tank.

This is an interesting snippet, saying you may be able to make a Death Knight of either faction.  This means that if you have all Alliance characters you could potentially have a level 55 Horde without having to reroll.  The question in the post is more for PVP realms, I think, as you can only have characters of one faction on a PVP server, but it opens up all sorts of possibilities.  If you have Horde friends on the same server you could make a Horde Death Knight and play them up to the new level cap with a lot less work than starting over.  Of course, with the limit being one DK per server, you then couldn't have an alliance one.

Factions

Here is the main article with all the snippets.  The most interesting thing for me is that Hemet Nesingwary will have a rival faction.  Wow.  Hemet would have to offer something pretty dang special to avoid me trying to kill him for all of those hunting quests he made me do.  The "Wolvar" sound like they might be a worgen faction, perhaps some that are a little smarter and have broken away from Arugal or whomever is controlling them?

That also brings me nicely to my next topic;

Lore

Wow oh wow is there a lot of stuff to cover.  I love the Azerothian stories.  Don't get me wrong, some of the Outland stuff is entertaining, but after having levelled several characters through Ashenvale and Duskwood I have come to love the Worgen tales and legends, such as those covered in the Scythe of Elune quest.  It sounds like the worgen lore will be developed further and I can't WAIT. 

There's also some dragon lore that I'm looking forward to as well, but I really do have an unhealthy obsession with the Worgen.

I was catching up on some podcasts recently, and in World of Warcast they were talking about how a lot of the BC instance bosses have a gimmick that, once you learn it, makes the fight easier. 

 

It got me to thinking on one of the subjects that both exilerated and infuriates me.  Random factors.

 

On taking on Prince in Karazhan, the number one reason why any of my groups fail is because of those dang infernals.  One drops on the tank and he can't move quickly enough, one drops right in front of the ranged folks and they're stuck out of range, et cetera.  While the strategies might include ways of moving him and so on, no matter what, the sheer randomness of where the infernals drop is what I find to be the hardest part of the fight.  Keeping the tank healed?  Yep, can usually do that.  Keep other people healed when there's axes?  Check.

 

Keep order and tell everyone where to move and have them do it right without getting in the shadow nova.  Umm...

 

There are other fights like this, of course.  I've heard that Lady Vashj has a similar random factor.  It just annoys me to no end when we wipe because of a chance event rather than because we just plain screwed up.

 

Prince does lead to funny death poses, though.

 

To Infinity, and Beyond!

While drinking my "morning" (mid-afternoon because I was up until 6am tanking BM for a guildie) coffee I browsed the notes from patch 2.4 on the test realm.

 

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/02/08/2-4-patch-notes-up/

 

A lot of the instance notes seem to be aimed towards making the 25-man instances more accessible and easier.  Such as the loss of attunement needed for Hyjal and BT, being able to fight Vashj and Kael'thas without downing the rest of the bosses, and it sounds like Mags is getting whomped with the nerf bat.

 

Is this a good thing?  I think there's two sides to it.  It's a good thing because it should allow more guilds to get through these dungeons quickly and perhaps actually get to experience Hyjal and BT before the WotLK.  It's also obviously designed to help more people along to being able to see the new Sunwell raid. 

 

However, all of those guilds that have been struggling with Vashj and Kael'thas to get their Hyjal attunements are bound to end up feeling a little superfluous.  And along with whenever content is speeded up, some guilds might end up in Hyjal or BT well before they're ready for it, just like how we were seeing >70 characters asking for heroic instance runs.

 

People who did the quest will get a nifty new title, though!  They'll have something different from "Champion of the Naaru" to display.

 

All I know is, I'm going to keep pushing to get our guild geared up in Kara, and then go see how much easier the Mags event is.  Hold onto your tail, mister pit lord.  We're coming for ya.