More purplz?

Last time I mentioned I was going to offtank 10man Naxx. Here are some items I looted off that run(I didn't get the SS of my T7 Helm and tanking gloves).

I also got the key from Sapphiron to open the Portal/Door to Malygos

In the end of the run I felt like a lootwhore but hey I can't just let them rot right?

I'm pretty excited with my new tank gear but I just wished there more dps plate that dropped or at least the 2H mace ^_^. That being said all this new gear is just gonna help run 5mans and 10mans smoother, and that is always a good thing.

I'm still running heroics. I need about 32 more to get my t7 chest piece which will be the 3rd item that I wil have bought thru Emblems of Heroism(total of 180 emblems).

Heroics has 3-4 emblems per run(5 if you make the timer in Strat) + 2 if its the daily. So prolly around 10 Heroic runs should cover it. I'm hoping to get it all done by Sunday.

Warrior PVE DPS at Naxx

Is not pretty. I was doing more damage when I was 70! Seriously. So frustrating. I was at 3k DPS on Brutallus and now I'm stuck at 2400 on Patchwerk ... wtf?

I know i know, crit/hit ratings have been changed for lvl 80 that we need more =). It' s just the warriors are the most gear dependent class be it Tank or DPS.

I can't wait to cross that line ,just like prebc and TBC, where warrior's gear starts scaling exponentially.

More gear -> hit harder -> more rage -> spam abilities -> hit more -> more rage -> and so on and so forth.

I just hope I start crossing that line after I get all my epic stuff.

My current spec is Arms. I specced Bladestorm and I spent the rest in Fury till Imp Execute.

It is just frustrating right now to be at the bottom of the charts when I'm really doing my best like pots, food, get heroic gear, strict on my dps rotations etc.

I got 2 dps ring upgrades since patchwerk and I'm missing 4 emblems till my t7 gloves. I'm also planning to regem my sockets to favor crit and expertise.

So next week should be different .. should be.

Royal Crest of Lordaeron

Is mine!

We cleared 25man naxx and 25 man Obsidian Sanctum but was up till 2am ... yeah never gonna do that again. I got some nice DPS ring upgrades last night but I also got some new tanking shoulders.

Stats are mainly for DKs imo but the DK already got the chestpiece for tanking offspec on an earlier boss so the shoulders was given to me for offspec also =P. Hooray for offspecs!

We won't do Malygos till Sunday prolly. Raid leaders wants us to branch out tonight and do our respective 10man naxx group assignments mainly to get gear and second to get used to 10man malygos ... that way it will be easier on 25mans if everybody already did the 10man version.

I will be offtanking our 10man group tonight. Hopefully we get far and I get some decent DPS/Tank upgrade. I just need 4 more to get my t7 dps gloves which will make the total emblems looted = 100 emblems.

How are your leveling experience going? You guys had a chance to do some heroic runs yet? I'd love to hear how everybody is enjoying the game right now.

Heroic The Culling of Stratholme Tips

This is the new instance which can be found at Caverns of time.

When done in Heroic mode this place is like the ZA time event. Where if you clear this instance in 25 minutes you get a mount at the end. I know a couple of our guildies has this already.

My favorite part is where Arthas bitch slapped one of the citizens. Bad part is you gotta wait about 5 minutes for the dialogue to be over with ... hopefully in the future they implement a skip button.

I''ve cleared this place about 4 times on Heroic and here are some info/tips I can share:

Lot's of chain pulls, not enough time to regen. Mobs keeps spawning.

Aboms hits for a shit ton and Ghouls hits hard and they Enrage when their health is low. So when you have 2-3 ghouls on you and they are being Aoed ... yeah careful.

Drakonoids on the way to the 3rd boss has packs of 3-4 mobs. You don't actually pull them. They spawn.

Gauntlet on the way to Malganis can be mana intensive for you healer.


Here is what I did to help my group:

It is highly advisable to CC one or two mobs. Anything to help your healer out.

When dealing with 3-4 Packs bunched up.

I start with Tclap followed by a shockwave. If i know there are 3-4 melee who hits hard I use shield block and demo. Hopefully by the time my shield block expires one mob is already dead.

Sometimes I ask for an HOJ after my shockwave is done

On my first few runs I had to use fears on the drakonoids. They just hit to hard for me back then.

Use cooldowns! Don't be shy in using Shield wall, last stand, and trinket. Help your healer out. I use one of these cooldowns on trash too simply because wiping just demoralizes the groups so I just use it.

Spell Reflect! If you have the imp spell reflect this is a life saver. One it helps out on healing and two more aggro. You can also charge the caster, shield bash then reposition the packs that are on you if spell reflect is down.

*note there is a mob in Heroic Ank Old kingdom which cast Shadow blast. If you spell reflect this it comes back to that mob for 50,000 Shadow dmg.

This is pretty basic but wait for your healers especially in this instance. They can go oom pretty quickly here cause of the nature of the pulls.

Of course you can ignore all this if your overgeared for the instance =P.

My main reason for running this instance is the shield ^_^. Pretty nice shield with some lore in it. Mount would be nice but I prolly won't do mount runs till everyone is geared up.

Kel'Thuzad Down, Server First!

Realm First! Can't get any sweeter than that plus another server first title?

Last night we started with Patchwerk. We wiped about 3-4 times on him. Grobullus was 1 shot. Gluth took two attempts and so did Thaddius.

We took a break to gather all our frost resist gear, gem, and enchant them. Took 3 tries and he was down.

We headed to Kel'Thuzad's room and there he is ... waiting for us. Last time I saw him was 2 years ago with 39 other people. The planning took about 10 minutes making sure everyone knows where to go and what's their responsibilities.

We charged on! It was a long a battle really. In the end we ended up one shotting him.

Can you find me in that picture? I'm that awesome cow with nub illidari helm shatterer.

What will the guild do after clearing Wrath? Well we will farm it over and over. Atm we have 4 10man naxx groups setup for next week. Not every group will clear it but oh well, it's just a matter of time.

Getting ready to tank Heroics/Naxx

As tanks get ready to conquer Naxxramas one problem that they will run into is

Hitting the Defense Cap

As every tanks know now, the defense cap is 540. It's really really hard to get defense cap w/o some major work, time, and sometimes even gold.

Let's get some facts out right now before we go deep into this.

You can't effectively aoe tank 4+ mobs. Three mobs? Maybe depending on your gear. If you are just starting heroics chances are you fall in this category.

Geez guys I saw some tanks yesterday charging in like a wild man. That's ok if you are geared. But if your health is around 20% after the pull and stays there ... yeah rethink that charge pull strat.

CC in heroics is key again.

If you are not a sunwell geared tank expect to replace your items before naxx and some 5man heroics. So expect to do a TON of 5mans and get ready to craft some blue items.

If you are BT/Sunwell geared tank. You'll notice you only had to change couple pieces like I mentioned months ago they will last thru naxx. Problem is your still not defense cap you'll prolly be around 500ish not bad but not realy recommended for Heroics.

So what's a tank going to do?

Base on my limited experience

Socket for defense

If you are using BT/Sunwell and can't find any blue gear that is an upgrade ... socket all defense. Chances are you already did =P if you were raiding naxx past few days.

That's right you heard me. Socket +defense not stam, there are some cheap ones out there that gives +12-15 defense. Sacrificing 450 HP to get closer to that magic number is worth it.

Nothing is more frustating than getting crited for 7-9k over and over again. Effective health/effective stamina works if you're def capped or close ...

This is what our MT did. He socketed all defense on his t6 chest and other items. Granted he's decked out in Sunwell you can still see the changes he had to do.

That is the key for us right now. Don't worry you'll be stacking Stamina soon enough but for now socket for DEFENSE.

Craft Blue tanking gear!

Crafting titansteel mats is out of the question. They are too expensive but hey if youve got the money more power to you.

You will do better crafting the blue tanking gear and get experience and emblems in 5mans. Because by the time you get all the titansteel bars you'll have better items or enough badges to buy new gear.

Run Heroics!

At least run the easy heroics once a day ... Utgarde, nexus and Azjol Nerub, comes to mind. Get some easy Emblems and upgrades =).

Lastly

A good compromise for 540 defense cap is 520ish. You will still get crit but not so much that your healer will go OOM the first 30 second of a fight because you decided to pull everything anyway ...

If you have been running heroics lately chances are you got some nice upgrades along the way =). Keep it up and you'll be tanking Patchwerk soon!

Next I will try to cover what Reputations do you need to get started tanking in Heroics or 10man naxx.

If you found this helpful or disturbing please please feel free to comment.

EDIT: I might go ahead and list some tanking gear that I am aiming for heroic runs next post.

4H Down & more Heroics

We didn't had the heals for Patchwerk yet so instead of banging our heads on him we decided to head onto the Military Quarter

Instructor Razuvious

This guy hits so hard that it's impossible to have a player MT him the whole time. So you mind control one of his students to tank him after that you get the next student to tank and so forth. Sounds easy right? Yup! If I remember right this is one of the fights where Blizzard took priest out of their normal Whak-a-mole playstyle.


Gothik the Harvester

You divide the group by 2, one on the living side one on the undead side. You basically have to survive a series of waves. This is the hard part, not the boss. Once it's done the boss comes down and you get your loot. Note though that whoever is tanking him gets a debuff that reduces their stat by 10% and stacks all the way to 100% so your DPS needs to be alive when he gets down.

We had trouble at dividing which side needs more DPS but we got it down.


The Four Horsemen

It took our old guild a month to beat the original 4H event but it was worth it. It's still challenging and requires players to be pay attention but for those who has done this before it's easymode.

It is ,like I said, still a test of raid coordination and somewhat of a gear check. SW raiding guilds shouldn't have a problem.

A badd ass tanking sword drop last night and I can't remember the name ... just look it up =P it looks sexy too.

The raid was called early cause we did not want to waste time on Patchwerk but rather they just did some 10mans to get some upgrades(I had to go to bed >_>).



Heroics

One thing ... Heroics are hard again!

Heroic The Unculling of Stratlehome

Wow just wow. Nice instance here. This has a timer like the Bear runs on ZA where you get a mount if you finish the instance in 20min. Doing this on heroic with a tank who is not def cap is hella hard. We wiped like 4 times on the trash =P and once on the first boss.

Heroic Hall of Stones

First boss was like Maiden. Easy stuff. She puts a blackhole in the ground which is used by the tank and healer to break the upcoming CC. Pretty cool. Pvp Trinket works here too

Second boss has a mechanic like Gruul where he shatters. He yells "ha.. ha" when someone dies on your party.

Ok the part where you escort Bronzebeard and protect him is really hard(duh its heroic). We wiped so many times it was ridiculous. Good thing by the time everybody died Bronzebeard was finished LOL. So our shaman ankhed and rezzed us while there was a speech going on.

Third boss you just assign dps to kill slimes, you get reinforcements and you collect badges and loots.

Let the Raiding begin!

Officer in our guild just posted groups for 10mans. I'm not on the "A" team but they put me as a tank on the other 10 man. Although I'm dps spec right now they know that I tanked Naxx prebc heck I raided with them prebc so I guess that's why.

Although I'm not in the balls to the walls Team I'm still excited tanking again ^_^. So umm.. prolly expect this blog to include some tanking discusions and prolly bug my fellow tank warriors like Yakra haha. Now I have to seriously look for upgrades from heroics, badges, crafting to not fail the other 9 raiders.

Raid leader mentioned that I can bid on both dps and tank gear because I'm DPS during the 25man runs. Wootsauce! More about raiding this week!

Realm First, Titles, and Naxx

Last night we ventured into the Heroic Obsidian Sanctum. With only 23 people we managed to defeat Sartharion and nabbed a server first, achievement and a title "Obsidian Slayer Herc" awesome to know were the only 23 people in the whole server who can sport that title =).


After that we ventured into the Heroic Naxx Raid. Entering this instance again brought up memories both good and bad.

After only 2 pulls the instance server started to shit on us. Took about 20-30 min before our characters were unstuck and started clearing.

We cleared Spider wing and Plague wing. We ALMOST had no one die on Heingan <_> but we had someone who misstep the dance. We headed off to Abom wing and our Raid leader had fun with a priest whose never been to Naxx =)

They told him to get in the middle slimes and fear them ... of course he died on the way. Everyone had a good laugh. That's why I like raiding in this guild. Yes we are a min/max guild but you don't really hear yelling. In fact I haven't heard Jiv yell at us. He just reminds us that he will replace us if we keep messing up and/or not pulling our own weight.

We were stuck at Patchwerk and after 4 attempts it clearly shows we need more gear. Wiping on him as tanks were dieng certainly brought up memories ... mmmm those were the days. We were going to do DK wing but couple people had to leave(including me).

So here's hoping we get enough gear for our tanks this week and next week to get that server first on clearing Heroic Naxx. Achievements are nice but I want another unique title =P

EDIT: I got my first 25man Naxx loot last night which replaced my t6 boots. It has tons of hit so I might start leaning towards TG. More on Warrior DPS post as soon as I get some decent gear from heroics, badges and naxx so expect some theorycrafting soon.

Level 80! My Journey + Heroic runs!

Yup I dinged 80 yesterday after discovering an area in Icecrown which made me happy and sad. Sad because I still had 5 quest to turn in! /cry

First of all I'd like to thank my wife for supporting me in this crazy endeavour and waking me up after taking 2 hour naps to catch up on leveling =)

I have never enjoyed leveling like this before. So many fun and interesting quest. They really made it so you are the Hero. Here are my experiences

Howling Fjord 70-72

This is where I started. Really neat zones. It also gives you a nice background about the lore. Sometimes I had to fall in line for a named mob which takes anywhere from 2-3 minutes. Good thing most of the allies aren't looking for a fight. I finished the quests achievement for this zone.

Borean Tundra 72-74

This zone was packed I mean packed. Zone was not as beautiful as Howling but that did not stop me from questing there. I finished the quest achievement. I ran nexus only when I had all the quest. Finished it and I was done.

Dragonblight 74-76
Another excellent zone. I did the Wrath gate questline by accident lol. I finished the quest achievement just by following my quest.

Tip: When you get the quest from the wyrmest to ride a drake and wreck havoc. Don't turn it in till you leave the zone. It's like a free mount basically to navigate around the zone easily.

Grizzly hills - 76-77
I was all over the place on this zone. I had trouble going back and forth to do quest and turn in. I was spoiled by the earlier zones >_>. After hitting level 77 I finished the free port to dalaran quest, got the cold weather flying mount, finished some easy quest then I moved on.

Shalazar Basin 77-78
The best leveling zone in my opinion. Hunting zone really. It's Hemit Nesingwary's zone so what can I expect? Kill stuff! Also questing for an oversize amazon proved to be rewarding =P. All the quest are well done except for 1 .. the quest where you have to find the key under the water. So annoying.

You can get a whole level from this zone and finish it around 3-4 hours.

Zuldarak 77
While I was at basin I was summoned by guidies to do the arena event very much like the Ring of Blood from Nagrand. Easy xp I tell ya and the best part is you get Blue items in the end which will replace you item =P. Our healer replaced his healing mace from Sunwell and I got the 2H axe whose dps is way way up there from what I was using.

You know what's interesting? A voidwalker tanked all the bosses.

You get the quest from the Goblin under the Sewers at Dalaran. Don't miss this one!

Storm Peaks 78-79

This zone introduces you to the Vrykul's lore. One of my best memories of this zone was the quest where you are flying on a drake then you jump into an enemies drake while flying and fight to the death! Was that epic or what? This is the 2nd zone where I did not complete the quest achievement. I moved on after I hit 79. I wanted a better xp/hour zone and I know I'll get some easy xp from starting quest from Icecrown.

Tip: If you only have a handful of quest left don't abandon it. At one time I had 2 quest. This zone really has assloads of chain quest and requires you to finish some certain quest to pop up. So be patient!

Icecrown 79-80
This is one of the zones where they use their phasing system freely. Example was I was sent to a cliff, defend it, I went back to camp then turned the quest in, got another quest to go back the same cliff and BAM cliff is now a quest hub lol. This happened like 3+ times.

Do you like bombing missions? Then your in for a treat here!

Some quest can be done twice because they turn into a daily. Do it again if you felt that quest was easy.

I don't recommend going in here as 78 or lower. If you can find a partner to do some quest it will be much easier.



What can I say, Blizzard really did a good job on the leveling zones. I really had a good time. So much work has been done and it really shows. Tons of variety in quests. I still have a zone to do and I have to finish the quest line in Storm Peaks to get some Rep with Son Of Thorin or w/e.

Heroics

Well heroics are no pushover =) They hit like a truck. We finished Nexus and Az nerub last night. My group already finished UK early that afternoon so I didn't do it. I was tanking them cause we had no tanks. All of them were in Naxx.

I got a blue shield from the last boss at Nexus last night which had 7k+ armor. WOW! Goodbye Kazrogal's hardened heart. I wanna do more heroics later today to get some upgrades. Hopefully I get some tonight =).

Any tanks here know any good items from heroics? I need some upgrades!

Hello Howling Fjord!

I logged in around 5pm. I decided to hit up Howling Fjord even though I leveled up in Borean at Beta ... So the first time experience was definetely there. I want to see the Undead's side of the story leading up to the events at the wrath gate.

The Zone was very well done add the awesome quests and it's just pure win from there. There were some quest where I had to wait for a respawn but it was expected plus the wait wasn't that long anyway. Overall people were nice in inviting you to groups when you both of you are doing the same quest heck even allies weren't ganking at howling. I only killed 2 allies while questing around the spider area cause they were ganking a fellow horde damn them!

Did a run on Utgarde keep after I got the third quest. I couldn't find any tanks so I just slapped on some tank gear as Fury. Pretty easy run I don't think we used any strat at all we just zerged them lol. I still have not turned in my quests for UK. I'll just wait till I'm ready to leave Howling.

DING! After less than 4 hours I has gained a level! I stopped last night after I hit up New Agamand. I have done all the quest prior to this area including group/instance quest except for one .... the quest where you have to kill elementals NW of Camp Winterhoof. Spawn rate just sucks for them I dunno why.

Hopefully I'll be done with Howling Fjord later tonight so I can move onto Borean Tundra and then to Dragon blight. My goal is to hit 72.5 by the end of tonight or 73 =).

I can't wait to do the Wrath Gate quest line!

Am I leveling too fast?

I've seen a bunch of post today regarding people that rush their way to lvl 80 and how are they greedy/no lifers/hardcore cry babies. Please don't hate. Hopefully I provide an insight for those haters why people rush to 80.

It's like your in a restaurant and you are eating your nachos etc waiting for the main course all you can think about is that dessert like Chili's White molten cake ... mmmm...











You want that dessert!

So you blaze thru the meal and ask for the dessert! heck I do that sometimes.

lesson from that?

I got what I wanted? You? Oh your still eating the main course aite that cool.

Almost almost same concept there =).


Here is one reasons why people rush to 80

Speed runners by nature - They do it for the challenge. Period. Leveling is just fun for these people.

My experience

LoTRO, I have 2 lvl 50s. Each of them leveled pretty quick especially my 2nd toon. I called it quits when it was time for endgame. I was more into the leveling and seeing lore/content. And i did finish all books on both of those toons =). I got my money's worth and bailed when I saw all the content from 1-50 ... twice.

When I reactivated my account in WoW back in March 07 I blazed thru the levels 61-70 about 2 weeks of playing with school/work. At the same time completing aton of quest. I only missed Blades Edge and a couple of zones for the Loremaster achievement when 3.0 came out as proof ... alot faster when I just started playing WoW.

I leveled fast and at the same time I enjoyed the content. Yes people actually experience/do this so take a seat!

I'm not bragging that I'm a fast leveler. I'm just saying that I do experience the content that some people are saying to savor rather than waste it away! So please don't throw the content excuse at least on me =)

I will rush to Lvl 80 on my main while getting as much quest done to enjoy how the story develops.

Once I start leveling up my alt I won't rush to 80 although if I'm going the quest route I'll still hit the cap in a decent time w/o even trying so I am rushing but not really knowing that I am ... get it? Did I suddenly waste the content?

If you want to level taking your time, savoring every quest moment, immerse yourself in the new zones more power to ya. I hope you have fun.

Don't be quick to say we are greedy, no-lifers, hardcore punks. We have feelings too you know?

To each his own and I plan on hitting 80 before next Saturday if not I seriously fail at leveling ffs im Asian! We have an innate ability +10 leveling skill, +10 grinding skill, +10 focus staring at screen for 6 hours.

Whatever your plans is I wish you good luck, play the game the way you want and enjoy while doing it.

First Day at Wrath

I told myself I wasn't going to the midnight release but alas the wife just had to brought it up last night and that was all I needed to join this madness. We left home around 12:05

Got our copy around 12:30, headed home. Upgraded account even before installing the game. Finished installing the game around 1:10am. I turned in around 18 daily quest + 3 lvl 70 quest which got me around 3 bars and a half(not bad) then I went to bed ...

As much as I would like to do some quest with my friends who was doing an all nighter I couldn't >_< I got work /sad. It would have to wait till tonight before I set off to Northrend.

I logged in couple mins ago to make sure Herc got everything before the journey tonight. I saw about 4+ of my guildmates lvl 72 already!

At least Herc is getting some rested xp since last night. I'll prolly burn thru it within an hour but who cares it's free xp! I'm usually pretty good in questing so we'll see.

I'm scheduled to be off on Monday so I'll have 3 days of fun. Goal is to get 2 levels per day in that 3 day weekend. So maybe 76-78 around monday night? I'll keep you updated.

Now this is just pure win

3 nights left and I'm still not ready

Here are my plans for the remaining nights before Expansion comes out.

Outland Loremaster Achiement - I only need Blades Edge Mountain. Gotta get this done. I want that Title Loremaster dammit!

Fix my Bag/Bank Inventory - This is a big one but I can't find the fortitude to sit and sort thru my bag/bank. Everytime I attempt it, I tend to doze off and my mind wanders O_O. Regardless I need the bagspace when leveling up.

Level fishing! During those times when I'm online but can't really play I just fish. I just press 2!

Level Druid to at least 69 - my new primary alt. I plan on leveling this druid whenever I get the chance. He's my enchanter and miner/skinner(not sure yet) so it will help me in alleviating the expenses of raiding. Plus I now want to try healing! Scary huh?

Help the wife level to get lvl 65 on one of her toons. She is enjoying leveling and doing some crafting at the same time but she also wants to do 5man/10mans now, wow what a big jump from just being my AV bot to hit spacebar back in May of this year.

Save up as many lvl 70 daily quest as I can on Wednesday to turn them in on Thursday when I do get the game. Dailies won't give you as much xp like the quests in Northrend but if you have completed them anyway and all you gotta do is turn them in ... why not?

PVP! I'm still not honor cap but I'm close.

I don't plan on participating on the midnight release, I got work on Thursday! I did plan on taking a day of leave but it's not til Monday next week. Hopefully lag and server issues has been fixed around that time. I will prolly be lvl 80 around 2-3 weeks. It depends if we do alot of dungeon crawling.

To my fellow WoWers(lolwhut?) I wish you good luck on w/e plans you set out to do before WoTLK.

Do you Gank(grief) alliance/horde?

I was questing on my feral druid(lvl 64 wooo!) around Cenarion Thicket just outside Shat. As I was just doing my own thing a lvl 65 boomkin doing the same quest. So I did a /wave to him and he /wave back. Awesome! We can now quest in peace or do we?

Right after that I tagged a mob for the quest. When I was around 80% this boomkin started attacking, wow really?! I just shapeshifted to travel form and started to run while the mob was on me, maybe I should have just attacked him /shrug.

In the end he + an ally rogue who came out of nowhere got me ... I was pissed maybe because I got interrupted on my quest or maybe the fact that he decided to attack me when I thought it was going ot be ok.

So I logged on Herc and went to the area where I was questing. I found him did a /point, /fist then proceeded to kill him. He rezzed so I killed him again and again and again about 5 times. There were other allies near him but I just did a /wave to them.

I thought I was gonna feel bad camping a low lvl player but I did enjoyed it ... alot. I wanted him to know that yes that was my alt that you backstabbed earlier you alliance scum! Sorry about that ally bloggers the moment caught me =)

Oh well its PVP server. How I wish sometimes I went full carebear but then I would miss out on giving back the favor.

/rant off

From a Casual to a Hardcore Guild Part I

Kyrilean over at Casualhardcore posted how the officer's of the guild will guide the guild in making the switch from a casual raiding guild to a more serious one. There was a same post in Tobold's blog where his guild was going in the same direction. You can even see my comment where I was asking why I was labeled as a hearthless raider or something to that effect.

Basically they want CHANGE! A good core of their guild want to go serious or dare I say go hardcore and leave casual raiding behind. I also believe they are not the only guild making this change.

I don't know everything about raiding but I have been around the Raiding scene since Molten core so I have seen a good amount of guilds formed/broken up. I missed most of BC and wasn't until recently I got back to a serious raiding guild.

So here's an attempt to oversimply(or overcomplicate) things for you.

In some cases(or most) I believe it starts out as casual raiding guild truly in the beginning with no intent of raiding hardcore

The Transformation

Phase 1
Guild recruits advertising that they are a casual raiding guild or theyre schedule is flexible. Players get in

Phase 2
Guild down Boss X! Wooo! Next thing we know this guild is clearing up content X. Moar epix for everyone!

NOTE:
You will always have players who go above and beyond like bring consumables, read up on fights, spec right etc. We will refer to them as players x.

In this phase it doesn't bother them that other players didn't even took the time to read up about the fights, or didn't bring any food buffs, pots, wrong gems, sucky enchants or pvp specced they just want the bosses down.

Phase 3
Players X taste the sweet victory of beating a content and get used to it ... could be a good thing or a bad thing. They now know the rush or good feeling of beating a boss/content. Now these guys wanna see more content.

Now players WANT MORE ... more to satisfy their carebear needs. Rawr! Not a bad thing =P

Phase 4
Guild hits a wall. Players x now demands the same effort from the other players. i.e. "Hey guys how about you get out of the fucking fire this time", "pay attention to your debuffs!", "have you dont the Gorefiend simulator", or "how about you not cratering this time on Archimonde". Most of these are not hard at all but apparently some players are challenged by this.

Some of them responded well while other simply could not due to playtime issues, rl, or they are just really really bad players.

NOTE: There will be content where a guild hits a wall but beat it anyway in 2 weeks. In this phase I'm talking about a major wall like an encounter so bad that before the pull you know you will wipe everytime.

Phase 5
Now two things will likely to happen.

Either
a.) Guild will move to a more serious raiding direction forcing new stricter rules to keep going or
b.) A good amount of players x will move on and find another guild(or not show up) and the guild will lead towards raiding as a casual raiding again.

I would rather have the former happen to be honest. This is my oversimplification please do send hate tells.

In Part II I'll share my thoughts on how do they usually go about this change if they go with A but sadly that is not always the case.

What are your thoughts concerning casual guilds going to a more serious(hardcore?) raiding route? Is it fair to the casuals? How about the players x?

Patch 3.0.3 Warrior changes and "Ninja Fixes"

There have been some nice changes last Tuesday's patch. I'll name a few

Titan's Grip: Changed to 5% penalty

Really nice buff here. It really sucked when you have full rage only to miss and miss and miss. Would this be penalty be upped again? Prolly but not in a few months when warrior's gear breaks the "barrier" where we become OP again.

Bloodthirst: Cooldown reduced to 5 sec.Percentage of damage from attack power raised from 45% to 50%.

Blizzard mentioned they knew we were complaining we didn't have much skills to dump our rage during rotations. So instead of giving us one they just buffed this talent which is not too shabby.

Sudden Death: Now has 3/6/9% chance on hit instead of 10/20/30% chance on crit.

Not really surprised here. A needed change so warriors won't shun away swords and maces and prevent them from stacking crit.


Now for the Ninja fixes that is not listed on the patch notes.

They have "fixed" deepwounds. Previously when you crit offhand, causing deepwound,s the %dmg it does is based on your main hand. Now it's working as intended /shrug. They also changed the % of how much weapon base it takes now ... not sure I gotta read up more on it.

This makes Herc a sad panda. After regemming and enchanting 3 weapons mongoose ... aarggghhhh. I was still doing 2600 dps but meh I want my 3kdps back dammit!

It's still a good source of dmg around 10-11% of my total dmg but not nowhere near the 28-30% mark /sad.

On the other hand the 4pc bonus of t6 will be useful =). Blood thirst used to be around 9-10% of my total dmg last week. This week it was around 13-15%.

Man do you love this roller coaster ride that blizz has put us in or what!

Wrath, mixed feelings here ...

Ah yes the last week of raiding TBC dungeons before we move on to leveling mode.

I only got back in the game around March 2008. Last time I quit the game was around Dec 2006 right before TBC's release.I didn't get to level on the swarmed hellfire peninsula like others have mentioned so this upcoming expansion is new and exciting for me.

I know I'll definetely have fun leveling, discovering new zones and doing some sweet dungeon crawling.

Once we hit Lvl 80 and we are starting to organize raids for Naxx it will be a different story ... the guild has just mass recruited, inluding allies that rerolled, tons of players and I mean TONs. 99% of them are really good players pve and pvp competitive.

No spot is guaranteed in Naxx(except for the GM and Co-GM) raiding so I expect a fierce competition amongst us especially with all the skilled players in the guild.

Part of me is excited while the other part is afraid that I won't make the cut ... and get sit out, miss the first kills, or worse get booted =X

The co-gm atm is my old officer back in my old guild, he's an awesome guy and knows what he's talking about so I know the guild will be pushed to its limits to progress as fast as it can.

I have no doubt the guild will nab some Horde first or even server first kills in our servers I'm just not sure if I'll be included in the "core group" and I really want to. Of course we can't have everything in life =P.

If I don't get in the core group then I'll go from there but for now I'll show up for raids with my consumables, right enchants, right mindset, play well and hope for the best.

So now your prolly asking "why do you put yourself in that position?" or suggest "enjoy the game, relax, and find a more casual guild". Well ... I like raiding =) especially when I raid with players who do well in it, with players who has the same goal ... win!

I take pride in the fact that yes we were one of the first ones to beat this encounter =) Selfish? maybe. Satisfied? Yes. I'll make another follow up post concerning the thoughts of a raider.

Specced Prot this weekend

LF TANK then GTG!

This is what I kept seeing in trade chat and even find myself doing it friday night and Saturday morning. So you know what I did? I specced Prot for the weekend! This is the first I specced prot since ... I forgot already =(.

Tanking as Prot was really really easy, especially on the AOE packs. I usually charge -> Thunderclap, bunch them up, Shockwave, Thunderclap and were good =).

I'll only run into a problem if it wasnt me or the hunter that pulled, not enough rage to pull of the above combo and dpsers attack, or dps just attacks right away ... really easy.

I'm glad I spent 50g to respec, it was worth it. My damage is not a joke either, 2k+ Shield slam is a norm. Sometimes I would end up placing 2nd or 3rd in overall dmg.

Doing dailies also went smooth. A rogue tried to gank me. If I was fury even with my epix I would have died to the chain stun lock but that wasnt the case with my tank gear and spec =) needless to say I took out the dawnblade mobs(there was 2) + the rogue with full health. Another rogue tried to kill me, but failed, while I was fishing in Feralas(what is up with the ganking rogues?).

High survivability + 3 stuns + burst dmg + 4 oh shit buttons = I win.

Anyway back to our main topic ...

Herc tanks heroics! Part 2

Well I specced Prot right? The wife had to work this weekend /sad so I just did what I do best ... play WoW!

Saturday - Finished up Heroic BM, Heroic(H) Durnholde, H Crypts, H Mana tombs, H Sethekk Halls, H Mech, and H Botanica

Sunday - H Magister's Terrace, H Ramp, H Blood Furnace, H Shattered Halls, H Shadow Lab, and H Aractraz

Now that I look at the list, holy crap that's alot of tanking in a weekend. Well last nigh after H Arcatraz I finally finished this achievement ...

A great bonus was me seeing some 5man content I've never been in. See I just got back in the game around March and I've only done about 3-4 5mans. I had to tell my group

Hey guys I'm tanking. I've never tanked this before so just tell me anything I need to know about bosses/mobs. Lets do it up!

We had some wipes but it went pretty good overall. I almost had the same group for all the Heroics.

Up Next ... Zul'Aman I'm looking at you! I have the bow and axe from Zul'jin but I didn't get the credit? Go figure.

Don't you hate it when ...

There's a quest item that you need but there's a mob guarding it. So you tag the mob and all of a sudden like a ninja! a fellow horde druid picked up the item I was going for.

Seriously?! Are you kidding me? So I followed him in stealth(my druid) and proceeded to give him back the favor =) ... twice. I don't do this sort of behaviour at all but oh man pay back is a bitch.

Gone Fishing ...