Epic Raiding Music

Think of your favourite encounter. Now think of what music was playing in the background? Nothing? Oh you turn game sounds onto mute anyways?

Ok well, just take that same encounter. And play Khachaturian's Sabre Dance in the background. Instant epic.

What do you think? A rousing tune, with a melody that ebbs and flows with the rhythm of the battle, and....Pop Culture References OMFG To Boot!

Torby Makes Another Save!

Study this picture for just a few moments if you please:

How boring another Hunter picture showing off their Terrorpene...

Here we see a dead tank, and a dead Jan'alai. This fight got hectic as the boss' health approached 25%. We were pew pewing along and all of a sudden the tank and a damager died..all while the dragonhawks were pouring out of their eggs! I think the boss started to nom on one of our hunter pets (we roll with dual hunters) but our second hunter started to die! I feigned death expecting a wipe, but somehow our healer was still alive, and my Devilsaur was still alive. There was time for a save!

Quickly I woke up, dismissed by Dino and called out to Torby. For the record, I *had* wanted to call out my Corpse Scarab Yquem, but it seems that after Patch 4.1, his size has increased to be the same as a normal beetle! (If you didn't know, the Corpse Scarabs that Anub'rekan spawn in Naxx can be tamed and they used to be super duper critter tiny). Our healer caught onto what I was doing, since they also play a hunter and along with the mystical powers of Mend Pet, Torby once again saved us some time from a wipe!

Now I would like to switch our focus towards "awareness". If you know someone who knows someone, or maybe even someone else who..ok nevermind bahaha, I meant "situational awareness". In a DPS role, our job is to kill things by using our most effective damage per second button presses, and try to get damaged as least as possible all while protecting the healer, minding the healer's mana, minding the tank's location and the other dps' health and location.

But as a hunter there is another level of awareness, about when to call Wipe Prevention. Will I incur massive damage in the next two seconds? Do the mechanics of the fight enable me to pet tank this? My answer usually defaults to: "hell mend pet is OP let's give it a shot if we die we die gloriously!"

This got me thinking, could my Warlock have prevented this wipe as well? I could have popped Meta since this was fairly late into the battle, while I distracted the boss I would then insta summon my Voidwalker and have him taunt off me. But health funnel is so crappy I'd be spamming it non-stop, rendering me unable to do decent DPS and we all know how strong the voidwalker hits.

So...yeah the end.

Zul'Gurub: How Interesting

I queued for a 140 yesterday and Zul'Gurub was the dungeon of choice, yay! I would have specifically chosen this dungeon for reporting purposes but the 140 valor points at the end of the run hold the most value despite potential small upgrades for two of my item slots so I left it up to luck to decide.

I queued up with a guildie, both being DPS and our first group encountered some issues at the first boss: Venoxis.

Wow is this fight confusing (for the first 15 seconds). You have poison beams, poison tracks, poison pools, one shot poison streams. Essentially I went with the basic strategy of: Stay Out of Stuff! On our first encounter, it seems that the tank and one of the (silly) melee stayed in a poison vent and got one shot. The (silly) melee then dropped group and our healer dropped shortly.

The group we got next makes me sad: It was a good GOOD group. We one-shotted Venoxis without anyone dying and I even got the [It's Not Easy Being Green] achievement, which caught me by surprise but proved my point: Staying Out of Everything works! (And I also wondered WHEN all those darned Pop Culture References would show up, and there we go! Having done the quest chain leading into Zul'Gurub, NONE of the quests had any pop culture references in them... I was SO PROUD! Unlike YOU Uldum!!)

The falling rocks and the "use the ice cauldron to free mobs down to 20% health added a nice twist to the boring trash clearing. We one shot Mandokir, and jeez I wish I had a Super Slam attack just like that! Essentially he murders a random party member and he "levels up"? I remember typing out Grats then immediately thinking..."wait a minute who levelled? My pet?"

After this, things get blurry. We randomly walked into a room full of mini tiki-heads, they were super annoying. The boss that they summon afterwards was just basic, stay out of melee when appropriate.

Then comes the Cat Lady. We didn't expect her to summon a gazillion cats while we were all spread out around the room and we died. We agreed to all stack up on our second attempt, and we did just that, as the cats all spawned we all stacked up and began to down the cats when.........our server crashed. Kicked everyone off. After logging back in, we had been kicked out of our parties and was promptly sent out of the instance.

Great. We had a great group and now we'll never ever see them again. An abrupt and unfortunate Ending of Fun. I didn't have enough time to queue and complete another one of these instances so I called it a night.

Zul'Gurub, unlike Zul'Aman felt so alive and immersive, I haven't really gotten so "in" to an instance in a long long time, perhaps not since Arthas chasing down a cliff. Oh good ol' Arthas.

Despite finding no upgrades, or even completing ZG for the valor points, I really enjoyed myself up until we got kicked off. I realized that at the end of it all, I didn't have anything to show except that I haved-ed.....fun! It's also great running addon-less. Nothing to warn me about debuffs, gotta read 'em myself, not worrying about damage!

And blahblahblah okay bye!

Zul'aman: How Interesting

I am very excited to announce that Mojo may very well still be available in game due to the Hex Sticks still dropping off Zul'aman mobs. The Hex Sticks are also tied to an achievement to unhex all the various characters we've come to love again and again and again despite no Mojo.

This is actually a passive aggressive post about how to use your head while facing off with new encounters.

I love new dungeons when they are new new. Don't know the fights, recount doesn't work, deadly boss mods is off, its all brain. The bosses are roughly the same as the old raid, but for those who haven't been in the old raid here's a small Mental Notes version of some quick boss tips. And of course I'll be damned to know any of the boss' names save for the last one.

The Lightning Boss Go Left When Entering Instance

This is the guy who makes the mushroom cloud of lightningy doom. He's pretty easy except for the fact that he'll lift a random group member into the air and everyone then must stand under this party member or die in a glorious lightningy death. Oh, and when white birds spawn, kill 'em!

The Boss That Turns Into A Bear

This guy has a new mechanic that took us all of five seconds to figure out. Occasionally during the fight he will charge a party member, giving them a debuff that lasts for something like 12 seconds, increasing physical damage taken by 500%. The trick is, it targets the "farthest" player, since I was the first person to read this and being the every curious hunter I mouseovered the debuff and said 'Ok, let's take turns being farthest". And the boss was downed with ease.

The Dragonhawk Yellow Boss

When this boss stops and turns toward someone, what do we do? RUN! He channels a flame breathe that leaves a trail of fire on the ground! This is the ONLY thing to watch out for. The other thing are: Dragonhawks Galore! In the middle of the fight, two Dragonhawk Releasers will spawn at the stairs leading up to the battlefield and walk towards the sides to release dragonhawks. We nuked them both down at first, but then ALL the dragonhawks hatched and we died. The second time, we only killed one of the Releasers, letting one release one side of Dragonhawks for us to nuke down, then have the other side hatch later worked much better.

The Boss Inside the House With Totems and Summons Lynxes

For this dude, your priorities are: Kill the Totems, Kill the Lightning Totems, Kill the Lynx. Then focus on boss when all of those are out of YOUR threat table.

The Ogre, Blood Elf, Spirit Threesome

Without looking at any strats, you can bet your ass that you probably have to interrupt one of them. I was right. It's best to keep the Blood Elf lady interrupted as she casts some dangerously hard hitting moonfires and heals. The Spirit...we burned down first but I think there's an achievement for leaving it alive, I think it does random aoe shadow damage.

Other than that, keep the blood elf interrupted!

Draakus

I remembered this guy's name since it is similar to Draakuru, is he his son? Where's the quest chain for it? After Zul'gurub?

Anyways, he turns into any TWO random animals during the encounter.

Dragonhawk: AOE Fire, fire breathe. DUH.
Bear: Hits hard and does that charge? (Didn't see this one)
Lynx: He'll "Claw Rage" a random party member that WILL kill them if not healed through, and it can ONLY be healed through. SO heal through it!
Hawk: Didn't see, but probably kill birds and avoid lightning???

So if anyone has useful tips for the Bear and Hawk please let me know, or not..I'll just figure it out when I see it.

Excited for 4.1?

I'm not. I failed to find Mojo in Zul'aman, despite running it every week and seeing someone else find it as I so nicely invited them along. Do those hex sticks still drop in the heroics? They should!

Once again, it's not a game it's a race! A race to grab all the useable epics and all of the valor points until we're congested with them then get bored and complain. I'm going to take this patch in stride. I'm going to absorb all the little details of ZA and ZG. Maybe tame a hydra and a spirit lightning infused demon Devilsaur (yeah right!)

There's a quest chain in Stranglethorn though, it ends with a mini-pet so I will probably end up doing that on my two main toons. Though I can see it already, there is a quest that involves killing a spawned NPC and there are 5,000 people spamming AOEs trying to kill it. Not this again?

It'd be *nice* to see a bow/wand/bracer upgrade but really.....I don't really need them. And why are 353s purple? Shouldn't they be blue? To satiate the hungry masses for epic loots?

There are the Winterspring Cubs GAH! Oh, Rak'shiri will be blue again! I wonder what colour Shy'Rotam will be? Also blue? Reverted back to black and white?

One of the bad things about reading patch updates is that after a while..I end up thinking that the updates I just read are already implemented in the game. Such as every single class change for Hunters/Warlocks/Druids...I played as per normal thinking all the changes have already taken place so I think the patch wont' "feel" any more different other than a swarm of players returning (to collect their lewtz, complain, then leave).

SO yeah ...

Vash'jir I Apologize

When I had completed the Vash'jir quest-line, I felt abandoned, the chain felt incomplete. Why? Well, because I didn't pay attention to Nazgrim's last words as he swam towards the whirlpool of watery doom: Follow me if you are a true (insert race) .

I observed my friend as he finished this quest chain, I expected his reaction to be "what the heck where do I go now?" but instead he said "you bet your ass I'll come with you!". I was confused.

"What are you talking about? Don't you feel something's wrong with the ending?"

"No, I'm going in to save Erunak, wanna run me on your DK?"

"To do what?"

*Ahem* So yeah apparently the quest chain continues within the Throne of Tides, you are to slay Lady Nazjir (is that her name?) and rescue Erunak for some awesome blue lewtz.

The entire instance itself is part of the conclusion of the Vash'jir zone. You end up killing the Lady, rescuing Erunak and also helping Neptulon cleanse his waters. Though what happens after the Kraken disappears is questionable.

So Vash'jir, we're cool.

ULDUM is still not off the hook though you ball of pop culture references you! /shakefist

We discover an ancient civilization with contact to the Plane of Air and yet we are bombarded by everything BUT anything to do with that zone. References references references.

It's Not a Hunt, It's a Race!

The most painful part of switching mains is not having to gear them up, or having to re-grind long forgotten rep, but to re-complete long forgotten (painful memories) achievements.

Yes. The Easter Eff-You-a-Thon!

As this holiday event was my new-to-Wow friend's first holiday event, I dragged him along to the Falconwing Square Fountain, the very fountain that Truny had claimed to be her own last year! This fountain is very effective when there are lots of people in the area spawning eggs up the hoo-ha. We each stood at opposite ends of the fountain, giving us both access to three eggs without moving. This fountain can possibly be shared by three people, each taking two egg spawns (or racing for the shared side spawns).

I got bored and decided to stray. Bad idea. What is with all the people stealing my eggs??

People these days are just so rude! I got /spat on when I reached an egg before some poor chap! Just because I yelled "SUCK IT YOU MOTHER PIECE OF GARBAGE!" or followed them spamming "EFF YOUUU" everytime they stole my egg. Of course, no one in the area listened to my sound advice that "RIFT IS FREE TO PLAY TODAY GO SIGN UP AND START AT LEVEL 50!!!"

UGH.

Luckily my friend sitting nearby (who got sick of my yelling "eff you" every ten seconds) suggested that since we've collected a fair amount of eggs, that we fly off and do some of the other achievements, such as going off to lay an egg in a hot spring.

Great idea! First we took our pet Spring Bunnies to go have mad sex in the different starter areas, then distracted ourselves by hunting down and attaching ears to various females across Azeroth against their will (I find this achievement rather inappropriate.....), since with the Great Emptying of Dalaran, we're reduced to stalking females in PVP zones and quest areas. I set off to Tol Barad, while my level 83 friend went off to stalk the various egg collecting cities.

With all the various other achievements done, we returned to the fountain late at night and finished off the remaining eggs that we needed. The end.

Does Demo Suck: Heroic Update

Oh boy I haven't ran a heroic dungeon on Truny for months now!

What I have found with demonology damage is that our numbers skew depending on who is in our group. If the rest of the group is in starting gear then our numbers will be way higher. I know this is true for most classes but it is more so for demonologists since we lack huge burst. I found that my beast master hunter does not suffer this fate, as his "big crit" ability is available every six seconds, and its instant cast, and his arcane shots, which sometimes hits for more than a shadowbolt are also instant cast.

Since our group was quite geared, I was doing less than 10K on CC'd trash and that was expected. There's no way my slow cast-time spells can outburst a rogue or arcane mage...or anyone at that.

On bosses, Demo seems fine, a steady 17K dps. The more HP the better!

Then again, everything got downed...its just that
You know what, seeing that Truny is just sitting around making Dreamcloth, I'll bring her into kill Magmaw and Omnomnom this week and see how she does in high movement/awareness fights vs the same classes I played with in this heroic. I'm quite excited, since we are now on to learning the Maloriak fight and jeez...he'd make a nice mount!

**Update: Maloriak has lots of adds? Sounds like a job for the AOE Master!

Truny the No Burst

When Poo Hits the Fan: Recoveries!

Hello my dear reader! I would like to ask you, have you ever been in a dire situation where you are the only one in the group left alive and resulting from your fabulous, skill saved the day and downed the baddies?

I've had a few, where popping Meta Armored Demon saved the day back in Wrath, but that was during easy mode speed runs.

I would like to talk about an incident that occured several months ago on my hunter. Wow that's how long I haven't touched my Warlock since the Fel Armor change. Back when I still ran heroics for those silly little points.

I was in a Heroic Vortex CC Pinnacle. The group had been sailing along smoothly even downing the first group of CC adds with ease. It was on the second pull, when we approached the first group up the spirally ramp where things went out of control. We lost communication, the tank had intended to pull to the pillar behind the stair, but some of us wanted to CC the mobs before they passed the lightning triangle and all hell broke loose. I think in the mess we managed to burst down just one. Mobs were everywhere. In the pillar, in the triangle, on the ramp, everywhere.

The two other dps had died and the tank jumped off the building to avoid death. The healer eventually died until they became overwhelmed, and maybe cleaved.

The lucky part of this story is that one mob actually evade glitched right at the top of the ramp, maybe the pixels weren't closed off completely there. I dismissed my DPS pet and called out my trusty turtle, trapped the lightning spewing mob, and misdirected what I can onto my turtle and all the while keeping up mend pet (they don't hit a turtle that hard actually) and timing Intimidation and Scatter Shot to keep the healing mob from healing and the remaining two mobs was just tank and spank. The evade-glitched mob somehow nudged his way free and met his demise as well.

So now I ask, if one person can single handedly take out that entire group why can't a full human group pull it off? Communication. If we assigned positioning and CC'ing to everyone things would have been smooth. But there's always a chance someone is standing in a bad location. But us hunters, we've probably been communicating with our pets before we even make any human contact in the game. We know their strengths and weaknesses, we can heal them and position them.

This was the second time my Turtle saved the day. His first experience in being emergency summoned was even further back in time during a Halls of Origination run, when the tank died to Rahj's fire explosion, though we had two hunters alive at the end of that ordeal.

And that's it goodbye.

Omnomnommed

Our one-raid-a-week guild has officially learned our Second Dance! I would like to thank the three Kick Ass healers that joined us! Due to delays and whatnot, our prior Magmaw kill didn't allow us enough time to get a full taste of Omnomnomtron, which I insisted that everyone should at least "get a feel of it". This boss seems superduperholycrapi'mzonimgout confusing and convoluted at first, and well..that's the intention of this boss. Though most of you cleverlings out there probably know that this boss is pretty simple, and the only "hard" part is during the transition phases.

So now I bring you a Useless Truny Tip!

Boss Summary:

Ok. Basics. Your goal is to kill four sentry robot golem thingies with a shared health pool.

How They Work:

The robots have "energy pools". 0-100. When you engage, you are faced with a single random golem, and the next golem becomes active when the current golem's energy hits 50. That's it. Once it hits 50, switch to the golem thats about to be active. Essentially all the golems have a nasty "shield" that they put up at 50 energy and you dont' want to be attacking it.

So the flow, the dance steps of this fight essentially goes: Pew pew pew, which golem is next, awareness awareness, pew pew, energy close to 50, pew pew, switch.

The trick is to get a feel of each of the four golem's abilities, and how you are able to cope with any two variations of abilities.

Mental Notes - Break Down to Lowest Common Denomnomnom

There are much better, comprehensive Omnomnom guides out there, but after you read all the fluff and the abilities, it all breaks down to a "general awareness" mechanic, and a "responsibility awareness" mechanic:

Electron: Run Out of Group, Spread Out.
Toxitron: Kill Adds, Avoid Poison Cloud
Magmatron: Run From Target Beam, Survive AOE Fire
Arcanotron: Interrupt Its Spell, Stand in Blue Pool

So during the encounter, you will need to be aware of two "general awareness" and two "responsibility awareness" mechanics such as, being prepared to run from a fire beam, but also being prepared to dodge fire pools and kill adds and blow cooldowns to survive AOE fire.

And so to conclude, a shameless plug: Umbrella Corporation (Lvl 14) of Turalyon-US is recruiting fresh bodies for our one-day-a-week raids (Saturdays, 18:00-ish Server). Our priority now is to find Kick Ass Healers but everyone is welcome. We are a fairly mature guild (lessened by the fact that I am in it), who understand your busy and varied schedules. If you need a place to chill but not talk to anyone, we're completely fine with that. We do old world mount runs such as OS zergs, Malygos, Onyxia, Ashes of Al'ar, etc, etc and yeah that's it I'm done here.

Turby the Turnstile

Demonology Warlock Damage Test: Failure

My dear reader,

I dusted off Truny the Warlock a few days ago and ran an Argaloth Murdering spree to test out if we "suck" or not. My reports show me that I am able to throw Corruption into our spells list which makes our buttons look like:

CoE -> Bane of Agony -> Immolate -> Corruption -> Hand of Gul'dan -> Spam Shadowbolt until Incinerate Buffs

I thought this was ingenous and I was sure to be able to put out some amazing numbers, however I failed. During the fight, my button presses and movement phase button presses were all correct however my numbers seemed very weak and something didn't feel right even during my Metamorphosis phases. It wasn't until AFTER the run, which we completely successfully had I realized that in my main hand was a SWORD, and in the other a Bunch of Flowers. Fail! OMGFACEPALM!

I remembered then...prior to the raid, I saw a friend in the main city and I was messing around with them as per usual friendly conduct and I must have equipped those randomly. Ohgodicantbelieveididthat!

I was still able to eke out 12K dps despite missing my actual Sword, and my actual Offhand a difference of over 2,200 spellpower, my sword enchant's proc, and a smack ton of mastery! I can say that we are probably still in a good spot, not as bursty but not "bad"...for raids anyways. And we're still pretty godly for aoe fights. Don't worry about heroic dungeons anymore, the whole "dungeons are hard" thing are a thing of the past.

Truny the I'll Try Again This Week...

Boy Saves Sister From Moose Using WOW Skills

I remember hearing about this story a good while ago and thought "ok good, he applied what he learned that was effective in game to real life". But, how unrealistic is this? It says in the story that he "taunted" the moose off his sister (the healer probably), then ...he feigned death? Wait a minute. Hunters can't taunt. We have distracting shot, but he didn't shoot the moose, and it lasts for six seconds and after that the moose should have continued to aggro his sister. It is said his sister ran away after he taunted the moose, which puts her out of the aggro table. Where was his pet? If he had a tenacity pet he could have used the pet to taunt the moose, but then if he had a pet the pet could probably tank the moose!
Now my real question is: When he feigned death did he do the race appropriate death sound as well? But good job on playing dead, works great on bears too.

Ozruk

What's all the fuss about?

When he casts "Gound Slam", I like run out of its area of effect. Then when he does Shatter I turn around and run out of that? What's so hard about running away to avoid things?

I think the Ozruk encounter should be made even more complex:

Ozruk Redone:

We want to keep the healing stress in there just slightly so hunters and arcane mages sorry no elementium bulwark reflects for you.

His HP has been increased by 2,000,000.

He has gained several new abilities:

Earth Shatter: Ozruk will occasionally target a random group member (other than the tank) and begin a 2 second cast. It triggers a circle similar to Shatter and everyone in that circle must run out or die. This gives tanks a bit of slack for wiping the group. Now anyone can wipe themselves!

Elementium Spikes: All throughout the fight, Ozruk summons small elementium spikes to jut out from the ground, dealing 35,000 physical damage to anyone hit. There will be a pre-cast dust animation on the ground. This will add a more interesting movement element to the fight other than just running. Everyone must be aware of the spikes.

Earth Chain: Occasionally, Ozruk will pull a ranged group member into his melee range, this will usually happen right before he casts either Shatter or Earth Shatter.

Throw some random bleeds out, put in some troggs that need kiting and BAM you've got yourself a raid encounter!

New Hero Class: Ascendants

Just brainstorming out loud feel free to ignore.

Starting Level: 70
End Level of Starting Zone: 75 (Yes you must suffer through a few levels of Northrend!)
Starting Area: An Island far north of Icecrown
Races: All Races

The Lore

(Ha, me trying to write Lore LMAO). Hmm, after the fall of the Lich King, the Valkyr were no longer bound to Arthas and as we've seen with Sylvanas' strange pact with some of these mysterious angel like beings, they are willing to join forces with us on very special conditions...we've seen them being able to bring the dead back to life, but it happens that they are able to merge (allowing male ascendants) with those who have attained a high level bond with them.

Yeah let's let the pros handle the Lore.

If this doesn't work, perhaps change it to some mysterious "Spirit" class vaguely connected to the Val'kyrs transformations. Since it sounds like they must first be a female Vrykul, turned undead, then "granted" ascension....so.....thoughts? How come other undead can't be turned into similar spirits? Arthas' "Gift", what is this gift? Maybe we've captured it or found a way to replicate it?

Playstyle

The Ascendants use a unique nine-step Darkness/Light attunement gauage which changes depending on what style of play you choose. Those using the powers of Light will attune their gauge farther into the Light Zone, enabling the player to unlease stronger and more potent forces of the Light. Those who choose to attune to the Darkness will find themselves one with Shadow and Darkness. Hmm, but we need a third talent tree. One that is balanced, or neutral. It utilizes both Light and Darkness. Maybe a support class? A high utility DPS class? We'll see. But essentially we'll use a Dark/Light attunement bar. As you build up your attunement you can buffer your abilities with "neutral" abilities, or use some neutral abilities to attune your meter to the other side.

In short, one talent tree could be BOTH an effective DPS and Healer. DPS and DPS. And DPS and TANK. Though to perform effectively in each tree you must be fairly far in (six steps) into your attunement bars, or else mass balancing QQ ensues.

As you can see I have no vision for PVP. We would have to make the class fairly complex, and the "neutral" abilities semi-constrained so an Ascendant can not be wailing on your face one minute, instantly going to a powerful healing attunement the next, and switching back really quickly. Ugh PVP balancing.

Here we will have another class to utilize Spellpower Plate (finally).


Some examples of Light and Dark Spells: (They will be versatile, in that depending on your spec and attunement, can heal or damage or buff)

Spirit Phase (Level 81): Phases your target into the Spirit Realm, giving all attacks done to the target a 75% to pass through them. Requires 6 Light.

Light/Dark Binding (Level 82): You attempt to pull your target into the Light/Shadow Realm dealing 8,253 holy/shadow damage over ten seconds. You have a chance to rip tear a portion of your target's soul from their body, healing/damaging all raid members/enemies within a 15 yard radius for (some random amount of damage). Requires 8 Light/Darkness

Ascendence (Level 85): You unlease your full potential as an ascendant by sprouting wings and taking flight for 8 seconds (works in combat). You are unable to use any damaging abilities while in flight. (This'll be tricky, to not evade/reset mobs). Requires 9 Light/Darkness.

To distinguish this class apart from paladins, the dps class must be NON Clunky. The healing class I can see as a blend of Disc Priest and Shadow Priest and Warlock. The tanking class is tricky, perhaps we can give players the option of choosing to tank using a light attunement, or using a dark attunment, or to maximize the utility of both specs. Who knows.

Yeah this is tricky.

Ponderables: 1,750

It always brings us back to a set of similar questions:

1. How did they manage to get to level 8x?
2. Are they trolling us?
3. Is this a seven year old?
4. Seriously?

Scenario: Regular Stonecore

I was reading up on Blood DKs yesterday and was re-intrigued by their mastery system Blood Shield and decided that this sounded more fun than the druid's mastery and thus my DK will become my main tank henceforth. I did a series of dungeons with a guildie who decided to pick up on a resto shaman and off we went.

Dungeons at low level are easy as hell especially when you already know the fights. We employed CC judiciously ONLY during the CC-Adds in Vortex Pinnacle. But this story takes place after, in Stonecore.

Up till then we had been running with the same people, a dream group, 5-6K dps at level 83 except for this one Paladin.

1.7K dps. I'm not here to lay judgement, just lightly, but my friend who is completely new to WoW, though trained personally by me to maximize the functions of a Beast Master hunter can pull 2,000 DPS. And he's only level 74. Shall the day ever come that I fade away into nothingness I'll know there's at least one more reliable hunter out there.

Here we see a relatively "Casual" player, he likes to explore, fully reads and debates quest text, but definitely pulls his weight in dungeons.

When my friend and I decided to dress up in all cloth and random weapons one lazy summer day back at level 80 and spam random buttons, we still produced a stunning 1.5K dps. Let alone a level 74 Cataclysm era hunter.

Now we ask: At level 83, shouldn't auto-attacking and hitting at least one button, any damaging button produce at least 2K dps? It boggles my mind. Denial. They're trolling us right?

Of course they die to the flayers flay. And immediately upon death they ask for a res. We were still in battle? Troll much? I saw that they had spirit gear on, perhaps this was a Holy paladin looking to do some damage but they have probably never healed before, else they would know that only druids (and dks later) can battle res. No the concept of battle res would be too complicated for a troll.

During slabhide, we realized that for most of the fight, if they weren't standing in the fire pits (on purpose I tell ya!), they weren't even FACING the boss! Mind boggling! Maybe their house caught on fire, or the soup spilt over ,or the baby pooped, or they were playing drunk or intoxicated. Maybe they were just a kid. I say this because I've let my eight year old cousin play a Worgen once and he didn't know he had to walk up to the quest giver to actually be in range to accept and return quests. But he figured it out after TWO tries.

Here we are min-maxing the very last few percentages of efficiency and there somewhere in limbo we have these people! I'm deeply concerned as to what the heck are they doing?

What do they do outside of embarassing themselves in dungeons? How do they quest? I want to observe them. Do group PVE encounters just make them really nervous, so nervous that their camera misaligns? Maybe they're trying really hard to help out, to pull their weight!

They had to have been trolling us. The spirit gear never lies!

If not, perhaps there are people out there who don't understand tooltips, or stats. But we've dumbed them down SO MUCH. I think on the character panel under "Spirit" it even SAYS "Healers like this stat".

Maybe they STILL think the "attack" button actually attacks everytime they click it. I was actually confused about this on my very first toon. But I soon realized clicking it again turned off my attacking, and it was just there for show. Really, the auto-attacking button is kinda weird. Rename it to "Initiate Attack", then once you're in battle it changes to "Stop Attacking". This is a valid reason. Though by level 83 I think you'd have figured it out unless you think its more realistic to attack, stop, attack.

Could we have helped? Would it have been super passive-aggresive to suggest to them "Oh, please face what you are trying to attack next time =)"??

Truny the Boggled

I Can Has Orange!

Haineko now knows what that random NPC is for!

So I was all excited last week about finding both of Thunderfury's bindings, but was bottle-necked by the lack of Arcane Crystals there are out in the great ol' world of Azeroth. Once again I flew on over to Winterspring, mined up crystals, stalked the AH and found about TEN for 3 gold each and gave them all to my transmuter to magically turn into Arcanite Bars!

I brought along with me my first and most trustworthy kitty cat Haineko and together we MURDERED Thunderaan.



Never again will these demons mock a Melee Huntard!

The proc on this sword is super bad ass fun. The sword has a chance to proc a cyclone and shock all targets around your main target, which also reduces the main target's nature resistance by 25. Nature damage? Cobra Shot anyone?


Turby gazes dramatically at the moon holding weapons.

On a completely different note, that PINK AXE in Turby's other hand was a random surprise weapon. I was in Tempest Keep with a friend, and we were looking at getting our T5 shoulders for the T5 2P bonus: You heal your pet for 15% of all damage you do. The shoulder tokens drop off of Void Reaver, but prior to engaging him, we wanted to take on the first boss of the dungeon: Al'ar.

For an 85 hunter, Al'ar is more boring than trivial. In P1, you pew pew the phoenix, then pew pew the little adds. In P2, I sent my pet to tank Al'ar while I ran around pew pew'ing and pew pewing the adds. We'll be heading back there again, since now my friend wants a shot at that axe.

Turby the Orange

Warlocks Suck?

I've been seeing a lot of these search entry terms for warlocks sucking for my blog. Hmm, a Warlock blog at that. Please be more specific. Again, I ask that you say if you suck in BGs, Arenas, Dungeons, Raids, or ...Questing?

My best bet is that you feel you are lacking in Heroic Dungeons. (Cause even now in Regular dungeons we can just AOE fest our way through).

You know what, let me run a heroic tonight on my Warlock and get back to you.

Here's how I see it: We lack burst.

Essentially I save Truny for raiding now, that is if I don't feel like going on my Hunter who has officially replaced my Warlock.

Call me shallow, but I like burst. Mobs die really really fast once again, and our LONG 2 seconds casts just don't cut the cake. How do my Affliction friends feel about this?

If there's CC, do your thing, kill whatever's left and ignore recount. There's no way in hell you can produce the same single target damage to a low HP mob as almost any other class out there. In the time it takes me to cast a shadowbolt, my hunter could have used Kill Command and snuck in an Arcane shot for upwards of 50K damage, whereas the shadowbolt that essentially casts could hit for maybe 15k.

Hmm....yeah we'll see.

LFD: The Root Cause of our Woes?

I'm just going to go on and on and on so bear with me. So with the Call to Arms mumbo-jumbo we're hearing a lot of: "The bribe won't work, I still hate random people".

The Day of the Dungeon is different than the days of old. We need awareness. First thing when I step foot into a dungeon is to analyze what classes are journeying with me and take note of the potential interrupts and different styles of CC we have. As a hunter, which of these classes will have a CC that complements my traps? I will then see what kind of healer we have, and what type of healing they tend to excel at, what is their "big cooldown" and to look out for it. Then I will take a look at the tank and see what kind of tank they are, do they need time for aggro, are they weak against certain types of mobs. This is basic stuff to help make dungeon runs go as smoothly as possible.

The next step of Awareness is to be aware of the fact that the best way to get mobs downed in an orderly fashion is communication. Yes, there are people out there who REFUSE to CC. But in most cases when I slowly approach a group of mobs (on my druid), mark the mobs and ask nicely, people are glad to use their abilities, and it's smooth sailing from there. From my first analysis, if it seems that someone has never been in a dungeon before, or looks confused (you can tell from their faces), I will explain various mob abilities, what should/could be interrupted, and also general boss strats and tips that the different roles can use to maximize their performance. People generally understand, and once again smooth sailing. And yes, there's always that ONE person who seems to have completely zoned out during the explanations and just goes off and does their weird crazy thing, which usually leads to their death.

It's one thing to explain a fight, but it's another to actually witness it, so I'm quite lenient on learning curves. Such as helping a tank who helps our guild out a lot do Ozruk. We've been in Bastion and Blackwing Lair before so I know he's solid. He's just never seen what the hell Ozruk does. We explain the slams and shatters and reflects and jumps and dodges and after a couple tries we get it. In this case, I knew the tank was capable of understanding the fight. Its the people who just seem to never EVER be able to grasp certain mechanics that confuse us. (Feign Death ftw).

The last step of Awareness is environmental awareness. Stay out of pools of things, except for that pool of heals after Swiftmend. If a boss does "something", run away from them generally. If there's a debuff or buff to watch for, well...watch for it. Our game is not as fast paced as we think it is.  One great example is Magmaw, one of the easiest end game raid bosses. We took on a strategy where hunters had to stand so close to the boss where we couldn't even DPS him and just focused on the parasites. Because for that encounter, the parasites are the real boss, Magmaw is downed via chaining gimmick.

So this Satchel of Exotic Bribery that Blizzard is offering, we know it still won't entice some tanks or healers to queue, because its not that they aren't being rewarded, its because there's a possibility they get thrown into a group of dumb-ding-dongs.

Unfortunately, we can not really force awareness onto other people (except via annoying Facebook statuses), especially under the shroud of anonymity that is the LFD tool. Some people feel they are too good for your CCs and that it takes too long, or maybe they aren't properly geared, or don't take notice to damage priorities, or they somehow managed to level to 85 by autoattacking. Or perhaps that waiting for an extra five seconds would reduce everyone's penis size which is seen as unsavoury in the l337 world.

There's always a chance that someone has never been in a dungeon from 1-84. And somehow they decided to do a heroic? It's a long shot I know, but hey anything is possible. There could be very young children playing. I think. Kids who won't understand tooltips, or understand the concept of "attack" or that you have to actually be in melee range, and they press what button "sounds the coolest". I know that is a lofty dream, we all hope that the "baddies" we've encountered are actually just naive kids.

Not everyone plays with Addons. Remember the Age of the Gearscore? That was fun wasn't it?

So back to "I hate random people". There are people out there who blame the healer when the group takes damage, or blames the tank for not grabbing threat, but what can we blame onto the DPS? If a DPS stole aggro blame the tank for not grabbing it in the first place because the DPS probably let loose early on, as a tank is supposed to be able to grab enough aggro in the first five seconds of a fight equivalent to a DPS' cooldown. Healers get blamed when melee stand in fire, or get cleaved, or when they steal aggro and get pounded on. There are also DPS who just wail on a mob because they think they can solo it. Sometimes they can, such as a hunter. It's not a happy place nonetheless.

Those with an analytical eye will probably be able to see what the root of the issue was. Perhaps a dangerous mob should have been interrupted or controlled. Perhaps the melee should have ran out of the deadly AOE. Maybe the healer really SHOULD have healed the DPS through unavoidable damage, and maybe the tank should have waited for the group. It all depends, but I am sure most of us are able to spot what the error was and will try to correct it. Hence communication. Though it can't be explained why people just randomly drop group without saying a word. Especially when they caused a wipe. That's just extra aggravating because you can't confront them afterwards unless you remembered what server they were on and go and make a low level toon just to scold them.

I've actually done that once. But out of caring. It was during a heroic shadowfang keep, we were at the last boss, the one that shoots a cursed bullet at a random person which does increasing shadow damage over time. This person was the only person with a "curse" curing spell but had failed to use it a couple of times leading to two wipes. First the healer got cursed and died, then I got cursed and we didn't have enough DPS to down the boss. The third time, the curse didn't get cleansed but one of the lower DPS got hit so we managed to kill the boss. He said that his spell didn't cleanse curses, but since I have a toon of the same class I knew that it did. But he had left.

I was quite concerned, and also righteously indignated. Of course it removed curses I've done it many times before. I began to worry. What if this person had decided to go into a raid and they all die of a deadly curse because he thought he couldn't heal it. I had to make a character on his realm, and link the spell and ask them to read it. Luckily their reply was "Oh yeah I double checked it does, I just thought it didn't before." Phew.

I take it personally when people don't read the tooltips that are so painstakingly detailed in every spell. It's as if I bought you a brand new phone but you say "oh no it doesn't make calls"......errr...what?

Now what was I talking about? Oh yes, dungeons right?

Dungeons are long and tedious nowadays. I'm sure most of us at one point or another have strolled up to the next trash mob and just wanted it over with, rather than appreciate what deadly abilities they had. So maybe its the whole dungeon design itself. Especially when the group has crowd control down pat, it just becomes brainless again.

We want dungeons that will kick our asses down the street, and not be aoegogogo-fests. Of course with improved gear, our asses get kicked a shorter and shorter distance each time we upgrade. From an immersion perspective, we want dungeons to be fantastical places within the world, rich with lore and details (well maybe that's just me). Dungeons with too many trash mobs end up being too tedious regardless of what role you are playing (yeah I'm talking about YOU Grim Batol!). Though dungeons with no trash are completely unimaginative (*cough* yeah YOU TOC!).

Is it the fear or judgement? "If people take damage, they'll hate me as a healer", or "Crap if I can't keep aggro on all these mobs I'll be judged as a weakling". Think of all the Nightmare PUG stories you've heard. People acting out beyond reason or logic. Sometimes you'll be in a wonderful group where everyone knows their role, everyone also makes sure everyone else knows what they're doing and you're good to go. But sometimes you'll get people who just love to cause grief and misery to others, or people who just ignore their key skills or ...who knows what they are up to?

So why do people act this way?

Pre-cata heroic content is so easy now that people are easily tricked into thinking that dungeons are just loot machines that you steamroll through with four other people. Tanks can pull whatever they want and their HP never drops below 75% and healers can do whatever they want and even deal damage and their mana never drops.

Come Cata heroics, they see their HP drop continuously and their mana pool depleting, the DPS are wondering what these weird marks on mobs are and are frantically opening up their spell books to try to find spells asked of them. Things are "hard" now. People leave, and quit. The tank is taking too much damage, they must suck. I must leave. The healer can't keep up, they must suck, I must leave. The tank and heals aren't letting us survive, they must suck, I must leave.

NO, that's how the new dungeons are designed COME BACK!!@# Yes, all throughout your levelling process **whoa these crows totally bombared my window**..anyways real life interruptions resolved...yes, even though all throughout your levelling process you were used to facerolling through content we uhh... kind of want you to take things seriously now and L2P cause...umm well... this part of the game is not for you...or you can change your play style so it is! It's for the people who complained about the stuff you levelled through so easily so they can have some fun.

Say whaat?

Hmm, so we want people to understand Crowd Control. Let's implement the idea early on, say at level 1.

Say you roll a new human rogue. He comes with two abilities. Sinister Strike, and Kick. Right when your cute little cinematic is done, an angry level 3 mob is casting a long spell at you, you must then figure out to use kick or you die. And once you die, your corpse is sent all the way to the Moonglade and you have to WALK all the way back to to your corpse. This will give new players enough time to realize that they should have used KICK on the mob, saving them the two hour or so walk across the ocean back to their body. Make it harsh, Vanilla players will LOVE THIS. Heck, code in a hill that never ends for 10 minutes just for kicks. Every class that has any sort of CC or interrupt must learn this harsh reality early on or they die. Horribly. And the user interface will continue to mock them "wow you're such a p*ssy for dying how come you're so incompetent you can't even control a simple mob?" all throughout their corpse run.

For the lower levels, we can add some new MANDATORY quests where a player will group with four NPCs from a neutral faction. This gives us the excuse to berate them when they make a mistake. Perhaps send them on a mission to trap or interrupt, or stun or continually harass a certain enemy mob and if they fail the NPCs can then yell across the region "WOW YOU SUCK AS A ROGUE YOU HAVE FAILED THE BROTHERHOOD" or "IF THAT STUPID HUMAN WOULD KEEP THE HEALER OFF OF US WE WOULDN'T BE IN THIS MESS RIGHT?" This will please the hardcore players so when they level up their new toons they can be proud that The Brotherhood never yelled at them.

Make the lower level dungeons HARD. I believe a paladin tank can solo their way up to level 85 in dungeons without breaking a sweat. Heck any class with buttons can....

Ragefire Chasm? Have the last boss slowly approach the group, pulsing an AOE fire attack occasionally. You can only run in when he has stopped AOE'ing. Make it so there's no possibiliyt EVER of running into a group of mobs and AOE'ing them down except for the occasional novelty groups. Such as ghouls or troggs. We need to condition new players, and recondition existing players. Currently, if you die in a dungeon its more like "LOL OOPS RES ME". I say when we die, a giant "FAIL" banner slowly slides across the screen along with the appropriate failure music. Once everyone becomes adept at Cc'ing, kiting, slowing, interrupting, stunning, you name it, then the players can decide how much of it they can get away with.

One great way this idea could have been implemented is through the "elite" quest mobs in Cata. You know how it usually goes, you do a short chain that eventually leads up to some "elite" mob which you can probably AFK autoattack through. As the new quests nowadays don't even require a group to complete, why not let the player hone their skills alone? I was helping a friend through Shadowmoon Valley and was surprised when he shared a quest that suggested (3) players to complete. I arrived at the quest location and it was rife with mobs. Good days? I know, the issue was that we can't seem to find a group to do quests anymore, but it doesn't mean that the solo quests should be easy as pie.

Yes of course we must keep the game fun, but the difference in difficulty for a player to succeed at end game and how the process in which they got to end game is too drastic. You literally go from having your healer have UNLIMITED mana going afk baking cookies to HOLY CRAP I CAN'T KEEP UP I MUST READJUST MY ENTIRE PARADIGM. Seriously, on my resto shammy, who is now 65 I don't remember my mana dropping to below 95% except for when we accidentally pulled the ENTIRE bottom floor of LBRS and only the did it go down to maybe 85% /sadface

I don't even know who the game is trying to cater to nowadays. "Casual" players who eventually have to toughen up to survive end game, or previous end game people complaining about the annoyances of the old world?  Its definitely hard to find a middle ground. But I know what can solve all our problems.

The answer lies within Karazhan.

Turby the Still Needs Arcane Crystals

4.1 Dungeon Finder Call to Arms: BOA Satchel of Exotic Mysteries

A quick update: It has been explained to us that the little "bribe" *we* get, for queueing up as an "in demand" role using the Dungeon Finder is a Bind on Account satchel of random beautiful treasures. So if my druid tanks and receives a bag that can potentially contain Rivendare's Stupid Horse, I can choose to send it to Truny. The mounts will have the same chance of drop as if you had killed the particular boss that would have dropped it to begin with, aka never. Well, I did find the White Bird Mount on my first try on Turby so....

Now that our perspectives have been altered a little bit, will this entice us to tank more?


See, the satchel of gifts is BOA meaning: "We know you people have healers and tanks, so use 'em goddamn it!"

I still say no. It takes little to no effort for my hunter, warlock, or feral druid to storm down all of the old content to obtain the same mounts. HOWEVER this is a really nice bonus if I ever do choose to queue up solo.

/end discussion on Call to Arms until further notice.

Patch 4.1 Dungeon Finder Call to Arms: How Entertaining

Let's start with the facts, then I shall pollute these waters with my opinions.

Information has just (to me) been released about a new change being made to our good old friend the LFD tool: You can read the full thing here. A plausible solution to shorten LFD queue times for DPS classes.

So say you queue up and your queue ticks on for several minutes. Afterwards, the queue coding changes. Rather than queueing you into a waiting line, essentially the usher will call out to any roles missing from your queue, which is most likely a tank, then a healer. This is fancy glitter speech for how the queues should have changed to shorten DPS waits. And you got it! To give priority to the stagnant queues. I wonder when this "Call to Arms" kicks in, when three DPS have assembled, or is it based on an individual's wait time, or the incomplete group's total wait time? We shall see.

Should you have been "Called to Arms", if you finish the dungeon you get thrown in under this title, you get an extra goodie bag containing gold/elixirs/flasks/gems/mini-pets/mounts.

Whoa, pets and mounts? Don't worry, these are all pets and mounts available through doable means by the player, and they will have a low low drop rate. The mounts will be "dungeon" mounts. I wonder if the Stone Drakes in Stonecore and Vortex Pinnacle are included?? Or the Blue Protodrake??

Personally, IF my main character had an "in demand" role, such as tanking and healing, then I would probably like this little addition. Though the only time I see heals in demand are for high level BC dungeons. Unfortunately, both of my mains are pure DPS toons, a warlock and a hunter. They've already gone out and collected a lot of the pets and mounts anyways. Now unless we start seeing single DPS roles dropping group, I don't see the DPS role coming in "demand" anytime soon.

Will this entice me to play my tank/heals? You could say that healers get an extra shot at obtaining mounts that could be hard to solo with their squishy butts. Well, my main tanking and main healing character is one and the same err one in the same.....whatever. My druid. No. I tank when I feel like it, and I heal when I feel like it. Even if I did get some sort of pet or mount I would probably think "damn if only Truny had that!". It'd make me feel tragically lucky, but its not game breaking. If I did want the Raven Lord mount on my "healer", my "tank", the same character would run in and take a shot at Sethekk Halls (spellcheck). A lot of people are sad and mad that tanks get handed rewards which would in turn reduce their enjoyment and their hard work. Well really, it doesn't take much effort to go to the auction house and pay 5 gold for a parrot? The cross-faction pets on the other hand cost upwards of 3,000 gold on our server, but we will see how often they drop from these goodie bags. Its not like tanks will automatically have their pet and mount rosters completely filled up in one day! And heck most people don't really care for vanity items.

What's keeping me from tanking outside of a guild group are people who don't understand CC or how to manage threat. I'm a bear tank, give me MANY seconds to build aggro. Sometimes it just takes ONE person to make a run completely bumpy. I don't heal much because...well not because of game mechanics or anything, druid healing is easy peasy...its because tree of life form is gone....yeah...I'm shallow. What about my other tanks? Well my next most active tank is my Paladin, and I tank with her because its FUN! I don't even care about loot or badges or whatnot.....heck I get into such a frenzy I tend to leave my group behind, and they hates me forever for it.

So will this "entice" me to play a more needed role? No. But now I know there's a chance I'll be "Called" and be rewarded with much glory. Though I heard Bear Tanking is getting much love in 4.1 so perhaps it will become even funner and the incentive becomes moot. See, as a tank, we already have the benefit of instant queue times, if that wasn't enough to entice you to tank I'm not sure what is!

Do I appreciate the proposed shortened DPS queue times? Maybe, if I ever queued again as DPS. OH WAIT, there could be a chance all my guildies are offline when 4.1 comes out and I felt like queueing for the new ZA/ZGs I guess....though highly unlikely.

Will This Work?

Shorten queue times? Yes. If a LOT of tanks queue. I think initially a lot of people will want to try out this new feature, only to be reminded how tedious heroic dungeons are. Heck, even in a guild group when I'm playing on my DPS toon, and our group doesn't require CC or much brain power I can still only do about one before getting bored. Or maybe that's just me. This brings us to the issue of dungeon design, difficulty, etc etc etc lets not get into it.

But will this make dungeon runs better and smoother? No. Though, since the "Called to Arms" person will only receive their goodie bag after the LAST boss in any given dungeon is dead, this will PERHAPS give the incentive to people to stick with their groups and try to communicate and work out issues, such as the enhance shammy always going down to 50% hp at every pull, or MAYBE we should CC one of the mobs that have an AOE.

Will we end up seeing more terribad tanks? Or will we end up with more people trying out the tanking game and liking it and continuing to tank until the end of their days? Of course its complicated to deal with such a multi-layered issue.

Will this make tanking or healing more fun? No.

We shall see, this will be very entertaining. So, my four dear readers what do you think about this?

Truny the Called

Vash'jir is Cool...After the Fact

Now that I'm all done the Vash'jir "quest line", I've been hopping back in once in a while to herb or to gather snake eyes for cooking. I've found that without the tunnel vision brought upon me by questing, this zone is actually really nice. It's quite sad.

The zone is highly detailed, with various little critters and the sprinkling of aquatic life, it's a fantastical underwater world. It's sad that after we do the quest line there's really no reason to come back and "explore" or "romp" (yes I like to romp.......) except to hunt rare mobs or to herb.

This zone is so out of the way, the only convenient way to travel to it is via a portal, I mean how often are you out in the world...actually how often are we even "out in the world" to begin with? Anyways...how often do you fly over Vash'jir and go "oh maybe I'll dive down and enjoy this beautiful zone today?". Probably never. There are no daily quests down there, nor are there any "hidden" quests since the entire quest chain is handed to you from beginning to end (then leaves you very abruptly and rudely). There's almost no reason to stray and since all the caves we end up in look the same it becomes slightly frustrating when you are sent yet again to another cave with quests that will probably lead you to ..yup another cave! The quests weren't BAD and when I was in that Submarine running around clueless, clicking anything I could....the build up was great, I thought "this is going to end epically!". But it was more like "kthxbaifck".

The Battlemaiden quest-line was interesting.

When I was still a Cata Noob, I thought that the new "hub" city was going to be in one of the new fantastical zones. I thought the new hub was going to be in Deepholm, where we would then plan our attack on Deathwing. But now Deathwing is just flying all over the place with no focus. When I entered Vash'jir I thought that there would be a hub city underwater, where we would build our forces against the Naga. Nope, nothing. There was a more "mystical" feeling to thinking that the Cata Hub wasn't Org or Stormwind. It's hard to explain, but let's look at BC: Shattrath. A city in a different world. Shattrath = BC. Dalaran = Wrath. Then all of a sudden we're separated. See, from a "regular" realm...I didn't mind the Alliance. Shouldn't we be working with them to down Deathwing?

I guess since Deathwing is all over the place we didn't know where to build our ultimate Sanctuary. It would have been nice to be in Vash'jir for no reason at all just that it was in the middle of the world. Or by the Earth Pillar. Then provide portals to all the main cities?

So yes, Vash'jir. There's a lot of potential down there for future expansions, perhaps we'll see a new 5-man where a strange dungeon has been discovered by eager underwater archaeologists under the silt and sand where a strange demonic force has corrupted a handful of the Naga. This shall be known as what I had named years before: Watery Throne of Friesh'ja. WTF. Come ON we need a WTF dungeon!

So, what do you think? Why am I asking a question? I don't even remember what I typed up there anymore so goodbye!

Truny the Vash'jir Topic

[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Lucky]

Last week, I was blog jumping and I happened upon Gavendo's post over at Rapid Fire. The title had Thunderfury in it and up until that point I seriously thought that it was a mace. I guess I had this SWORD and Sulfuron's Hammer Thinger mixed up or merged.

So I saw the picture, and I thought "Ok so you're holding a cool looking sword, so what?" then I saw the achievement and I thought "Oh ok is that fake?", then I looked again "Blessed BLADE".....BLADE!

OHH! My moment of Noob had dissipated and I looked up the sword on Wowhead promptly! I looked up the method to obtain such a cool legendary(ily spammed) sword and the process was fairly simple. Get lucky with drops on two bosses and obtain a bunch of mats.

The materials are easy enough to get with our coffers flowing with gold, luckily we had made a raid on Blackwing Lair way back and had accumulated some Elementium Ingots.

So I jumped into Molten Core last week partly to gear up a friend and to seek the Bindings, and found the left binding off of Garr the Stone Guy Surrounded by Other Stone Guys. Barn Geddon failed to drop his binding, but I did get to start the quest.

Just yesterday, my friend tagged along again since he has been deemed "Magical Drop Rate Man" and lo and behold the Right Binding dropped!

All I need to do now is to mine up a bunch of thorium and arcane crystals /shakefist and I'm sure there will be pictures galore to come!

Turby the Blessed

Generic Boring Raiding Post

I hadn't been available for our past several raiding runs, which take place Saturday evenings. One day a week may seem paltry but this is a great schedule for most of us, and for myself anything more than one day would probably lead to burnout.

Ever since the last time I was in Bastion of Something and downed Halfus, our group had been struggling with the alternating drakes ever since. A group of us vouched for BWD (whatever that stands for, I called it the "Lava Worm Flame Pillar Kill Worms Raid") and we went in and downed Magmaw was his name, in two tries. Easy peasy and greatly satisfying considering half of the group had never even seen this encounter before.

I specced Survival this time (yes on my Hunter) for the increased AOE damage to help kill the worms ASAP. We used a different techique on worm management, where we had an actual tank kite and tease the worms while EVERYONE stacked near Magmaw regardless of if we could damage him or not. Though it doesn't really matter since the only time to DPS him is during his head-chained thingy.

Worms were downed FAST, we had two survival hunters and that did the job fine, nice and clean.

We are most likely going to attempt Omnomnomtron this weekend, but again I may not be available to report it.

My Warlock is also officially retired until Maelstrom Crystals become dirt cheap commodities and I can go out and buy the Power Torrent enchant for her Waldo's Sword Cane. I spent a good chunk of my fortune on that then the fel armor change hit and it went to waste.

Also completely off-topic but I've been considering putting "Corruption" back into my repertoire of Demonology Pew Pews, cause when you think of it, our main DOT Immolate never runs out so why not? Oh right, I'm lazy as hell. Oh well, I'll try it out come patch 4.1, which my hunter will still take priority in running the new dungeons and checking out how AWESOME they've remodelled the 2D fences in Zul'Aman!

Truny the Retired