He Returns!

Not much to say here, other than...Zev is back! In the form of his so-far level 63 DK, Zeltan :)

New Layout

Well, mostly just a new heading. But I've modified some old info on the side as well.

Either way, I like the new title - any comments on it?

Wrath!! And other stuff.

Okay...a lot to talk about. But there's a long queue for Dath, so I'll be fine.

Firstly: The expansion, and everything that comes with it. I went to the midnight launch (thanks Moon)! Got home the next day, created a DK, Makolan. Now since I've got a lot to say, I'm going to try and summarise everything - so I'll just say that I love DK's. Especially the starter zones. And the gear looks great. The abilities are awesome, and more complex and interesting compared to spamming FoL/Steady depending on whichever character I'm logged onto. I'm Blood, at level 61, and the self-heals along with dps is pretty damn nice. 5-man runs of all DK's in Ramparts are fun. I'm not quite sure whether to level this guy or Elf, but I'm leaning towards huntering along to 80 before I spend too much time on Makolan.




And now for something completely different.

Northrend! Although I haven't done much here - neither toon's levelled yet and Adi still hasn't been touched - at least Elf's pretty close to 71. I'm hoping to get it tonight. Elf's replaced one of his rings, but no other gear's been touched yet. My skinning is 400-ish so far and my LW is somewhere around 390. Stampy the Gorilla is awesome for levelling - AoE-grinding with Thunderstomp, Volley, and 10+ mobs. I'm really looking forward to levelling through to 80 with Moon. I'm not sure about my overall feelings of Borean Tundra - I'm only about halfway through it, but there's already some things I like and some things I don't. The 'Kill X of Y' quests get a bit numerous, but it helps show off the zones you go to. I like the scourge-infected farm town and the mine, and the Mammoths are great for skinners and grinding, but a lot of the scenery seems to be a somewhat strange mix of Darkshore and Azshara. The mobs are all quite new, and the DEHTA quests are good. The mist effect from the titan-giant-thingies gets a bit annoying after a while. The Nexus is pretty cool, especially the last boss - the others are trivial for a well-geared group, but Keristrasza's stacking debuff, Intense Cold, adds some interesting things to the fight.

And now for something completely different.

This is a short one, but I love Devilsaurs. The shaking, the growing, all those other things melee people hate. My Devilsaur (named Cat) will likely be my DPS raiding pet for 80. I don't have any good screenshots of him in combat yet, but, just for good measure, here's a strange pic from when I was taming him.


And now for something completely different.

Another short one, but I may as well get the old news out of the way. We full-cleared ZA the week after 3.0, and Adirix got full-epic with his Dark Blessing mace from Zul'jin.

And now for something completely different.

Friends keep coming and going in WoW. Guildies join and leave. In the last month or so, I've had Obe and Red leave [:(], a Horde friend come and join the Alliance in the form of Doneath the Death Knight, Duskspeed rerolling a Death Knight also (with the name of Deathspeed. So creative). Zev's coming back in around a week, only to have the bad luck to have to leave for another 3 months again next April. (:P) Oh, and Obe and Red may or may not be coming back. If they are, none of us know whether it'll be tomorrow or in the next 5 years. Below - some screenshots of Obe's sendoff from me, Jondy, and Borg.






And now for something completely different.

The last thing for now...the queues! Dath'Remar isn't a low-pop realm in the first place, and is often full. But with WoTLK, the queues are insane (yes, I know all realms are probably like this, but testing each realm's queue length isn't exactly my idea of a good time). Just look at the picture...


All queues and no levelling makes Elf go crazy. 1531 queues are not good.

Anyway, that's what it was when I started writing this post...it's now at 715. And an estimated time of 141 minutes. /sigh.

Well, that's pretty much my summary of Wrath and all that's happened around the guild surrounding the release. I might add an extra pic or two later, and maybe another post if I've forgotten something, which I probably will have. And I'll try and post more frequently. I promise. =/

Bye for now,
Elf.

A Summary of 3.0

Here's my opinion of 3.0, and some of the things surrounding it.

1) The class mechanic/talent changes: For the most part, I like these changes. Elf is less about timing steady shots, and can now work in other things, as well as more micromanagement of the pet abilites. This is because most hunter shots have stopped resetting the Autoshot timer, which makes hunters more of a fast-paced dps class, instead of timing the same spammed attack. Steady's still the main shot by far, but glyphs now encourage us to work in stings and other shots. And also, pets and their talent trees are far better with the new system, as it allows us to decide more on what we want, as a matter of choice. Rabid and the new form of Kill Command are some nice things that add some more variation to our dps cycles.

Also, I might go MM soon to test out Chimaera Shot (or however it's spelt :P), and how that works with the stings. I have mixed feelings of AoTV - you regain mana far quicker, but lose damage in the meantime. Although it's far better for mana regain, and so only a short time with the dps recuction, I'm still not sure on this one. On a final hunter-mechanics note, the change to Volley is - obviously - very welcome. This allows us to do some nice AoE damage, just a nice new little element of the class. Overall, the new hunter mechanics are certainly a change for the better.

As for Paladins, the realm of healing has also become less boring. BoL, along with a glyph or two, increases our AoE healing capacity fairly nicely. Somewhere with the transition to spellpower coefficients, my heals have also been increased - FoL to an 1800 average, and HL to around 5-6k. I don't see why the complaints about Holy Light are so numerous, but then again, I haven't done much healing in 5-mans since the patch, so I can't be sure of everything. Holy Shock - while still not efficient - is now certainly a viable ability. With nearly a third of the previous cooldown, the mana cost lowered by a few hundred, a few talents that add synergy, and the healing amount/range increased (I've been able to crit-heal for well over 4000 a few times), being on the move doesn't hurt us as much as it used to. As I've already said, BoL helps with our raid healing (for those who don't know, Beacon of Light is a buff to put on the MT, and it means that whenever you heal someone within a generous range around the tank, the tank is healed for that same amount), but there's something that could change the usefulness of this - the controversial Glyph of Flash of Light. The question is - when Beacon is put on the MT, and you use the FoL so that your HoT is on 5 raid members at once - does the tank get healed for the combined sum of HoT's on all those 5 members? If so, this glyph could have some great situational uses. One last thing I'm glad about for Paladin changes is the Seal and Judgement rework. Judgement of Light in raids means I have a whole lot of ticks for around 150 on the melee, around 1 every 5 seconds for each melee - and in a raid with multiple tanks and a group of melee dps all on one target, this could surely help out with heals. As for the seals, I haven't tried Light yet, but Wisdom's mana regen is insanely good - although requiring me to swing away in melee, it allows me to keep a high mana pool - using this in some Kara fights, I had full mana at the end of the battle after being reduced to half at some point. And, for Prot and Ret - I don't know for sure, but Prot seems a lot of fun from what I've tried on PTR. And the ret changes are welcome, although I wish they'd stop requesting to be buffed more.


2) Instance changes: This is another topic on which I can't quite decide my feelings. The nerfs to raid boss health are great in that they allow everyone to get achievement points, instruct raiders for a brief few weeks to get ready for WoTLK, and see as much of the content as they can. The only problem I have with it, though, is that it's kinda an anticlimax. Blasting through things just doesn't mean as much as it used to, and it seems Blizz is just using this as another way to have us wanting WoTLK.
The thing is, it's working well for them. :P


3) Inscription: I don't have anything bad to say about this, really. I simply love this profession. Even though the insanely inflated price of herbs can get annoying while levelling the profession, and near-impossible for lower levels, there's nothing that can be done about that. It was expected, but couldn't be prevented. The actual profession, though, I enjoy very much. I'm not much of a crafter - it took me months after getting to 70 on Elf to raise my Leatherworking to maximum, and I didn't quite see the point in that, or enjoy it very much. Also, the general grind of getting different mats from all over the place, costing hundreds of gold to make a rare to even have a chance at getting one level, really isn't my thing. Inscription, though, is different. It's simple, basic. For the bulk of what you'll make - glyphs - all you need is herbs, and those thingies you buy from vendors. As usual, I forget what they're called for now. But anyway - as well as the simplicity of the mats, there's no long hours in instances or months of rep grinds required to get useful recipes. Everything you learn is - to my knowledge - from your Inscription trainer, or from minor glyphs you find via research. The last thing I like about this profession is that it doesn't need to be at maximum level to be useful. You can still make a living, if not a profit, from lower level inscription. There's rarely two glyphs for the same spell, meaning that if you like a certain spell, and it's a lower level glyph, then that lower-level glyph is what you'll use. Sure, things from 300+ are a fair chunk more useful, but the lower level glyphs aren't so obsolete that you'll never use them again.

I realise I'm rambling on, but - as I've probably said in about every sentence now, I've noticed - I really like this.


4) Hallow's End: Well, technically this isn't 3.0, but more a few days after. Either way though, it's a recent event that I thought I may as well post about, as the blog didn't exist this time last year.

I like the events - and especially the achievements centred around this. Although I think the one to gather 20 masks is pretty damn far-fetched. The Headless Horseman in SMGY is interesting, a way for people to get some quick epics - whether it be for saving them for the pre-WoTLK nostalgia that will come, trying to min/max every last bit for the final weeks of raiding, or simply because you want to ride around on a broom. All in all, a fairly good event, when compared to some of the others which are a fair disappointment. Maybe it's just because the achievements give a sense of - well, achievement - but I like this event, nonetheless.

5) THE LAG!: I don't think I can say much on this one. I probably don't need to, for anyone on Dath (or to a lesser extent, the other Oceanic servers) would know about this by know, unless theyve turned off all their chat channels, ignored everyone on their friend lists and sat in the middle of Silithus for the past week. And if I did say anything, I'd probably go for a hundred lines spamming about how annoying this can get while doing certain things (namely, collecting items from a mailbox) - so, for all our sakes, I think I'll stop here before I spam us all to death.


Wow, I've only just realised I've been writing for almost the last hour, and probably killed you all with my wall of text. My bad. :P

Of Healing and Hunting

Just thought I'd post some screenshots of a few things.


(Contrary to popular belief...Hunter DPS has not been nerfed. Much the opposite :D)


(Elf with his new gear)


(Adi, now only 3 off full-epic ^.^)

A Non-WoW post? No Way!

Just thought I'd make this post, for two reasons - firstly, because this is one of my favourite Youtube videos. Secondly, to see if I'm able to use the Embed feature. I really need to learn more about blogging.

Anyway, here it is - the ending theme of my favourite TV show, with a vid made by some guy. Not sure who.



(Edit): Whoa, something actually worked for once! That's a first. =/

Like An Elevator...

...Up and down.

Hooray, 3.0 is up!
...And, you guessed it, the servers are down.
I feel like throwing my Hearthstone at Blizzard Employees.
Except, I can't log in to get the hearthstone.

...Pink? -.-

...Yes, pink. But for now - ignore the title. I'll get to that later.

Last night, The Ancients - along with some members from other guilds and PUG's - arrived at Gruul's Lair a bit past 7:00. It was my first time healing - I'd been lucky enough to have Adirix accepted into the raid group, and was eager to see how a 25 man would look from a healer's perspective.

As we walked through the portal, the usual near-endless buffing commenced. Then, we thought all the fuss was over - but, what would Gruul's be without people forgetting to stand right behind the Lair Brute?
Needless to say, this happened just about every pull.

After raid leaders and assistants trying - and failing - to convince people to stand behind the Lair Brute, we got to High King. Konbawa changed into his badly colour-coordinated stamina greens, and, after re-explaining the tactics, we were off.
We managed to down High King on our first attempt, and I found the healing to be quite a welcomed change from spamming Steady Shot.

We then - with more Lair Brute problems, of course - progressed onto Gruul. And can you guess what the final randomised pull before Gruul was?
Yep. Three Lair Brutes.

Running in knowing the tactics for Gruul - and yet bewildered on what to do as a healer - was a quite interesting experience. Unlike for High King, though, healing instead of DPS wasn't quite so fun. Here's what was going through my head, and across the screen, as the Gruul fight went on:
'Out of Range'.
'Out of Range'.
'Out of Range'.
'Out of Range'.
Ooh, I've found someone in range to heal! Yay!
*Start casting*
*Gruul silences*
Damn.
'Out of Range'.
'Out of Range'.
'Out of Range'.
Oh good, another person to heal, and Gruul can't silence yet...:D
*Start casting*
*Gruul uses Ground Slam*
Aww, you gotta be kidding.

Well, you get the idea. But, as with HKM, we managed to down Gruul, first shot. Grats to all who got loot from Gruul and High King - also, I managed to snag myself a pair of Justicar Leggings.

At that time, it was around 9:00, and only two people had to go, so we decided we'd press on for a try at Magtheridon. This was going to be the more difficult one - we'd only had one attempt, last week - which I couldn't go to anyway. But, it was worth the try for this week.

After finding a replacement healer and dps, we were set, and got quickly to HFC for summons. We rushed through the trash, and, before we knew it, the massive Pit Lord was standing in front of us. From there, some people got confused as the cubes and cave-in were explained in depth - but, the fight is simpler in practice than in theory, as long as the cube-clickers time well. Our first attempt got Mag to a near 11%, and after getting back in the instance and making a few changes, we were set for the second attempt. This didn't go quite so well as the first - with Magtheridon staying at 20-ish percent health, but, by now, we knew what to do. Our third attempt, with just a few minor tweaks to the strategy, managed to down the big slug with near perfection - only one death! ^.^

After we rezzed, the loot was again distributed - and, taking a look, I was amazed at the amount. A Thundering Greathelm, three T4 tokens, Magtheridon's Head - which turns into an epic ring and 3k rep - as well as a 20 slot bag, a sack of gems to distribute to the lucky ones, 3 BoJ...and the Aegis of the Vindicator. Loot was spread widely, and again, congratulations to everyone who got some - especially Barrath, who really cleaned up loot in both Gruul's and Mag's. Also, I envy all those who got their Champion of the Naaru titles.

The thing is, though - I'd say not many people would envy me. You see, I was 'lucky' enough to get the shield. Great!, I thought. I collected my BoJ, the shield, and left the raid, and Mort was nice enough to enchant the shield for me. I thanked him, then equipped my shield - and it should suffice to say that this is where the title of the post comes in. I mean, honestly! Does anyone have a slightest idea of a reason that an evil Pit Lord's shield would be flourescent pink! Why!? /QQ.

Pink shield aside, though - it was a great raiding night, and thanks to all that tanked, healed and dps'ed up a storm. Until next time!

Elf.