Purplz 4 My Warrior

A week of playing the AH

2010-07-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

It's been about a week now since I started playing the AH. I started with 300 gold and within a week I am now sitting at 10k gold. I could have had more if I didn't spend flying cold weather mount on two of my toons(soon to be 3). If you read my last few posts I was aiming for 10k gold by the end of the month! My hopes are high that I will be sitting at 20k gold come August.

I started with belt buckles but now I am starting post a couple more item like enchanting scrolls, rods, and some rare gems. I've run into some AH campers and I really don't have the time to hit the cancel button on my QA3 every minute so I just let them undercut me. I will try to slowly break into the alchemy business and get more into JC. I'll post a report on some lessons learned and AHA moments by the end of the week.

PVE wise, I am one achievement short of getting my Red Proto Drake. What sucks about it is it doesn't involve skill but pure RNG. I need to kill Moragg from Violet Hold on Heroic to finish the Lockdown achievement. I have never ever seen him come up as a boss at VH ever! Maybe once while I was leveling up. I can't believe it has come down to this but I guess it just means I need to try every day to see if I would get lucky.

Now this is just crazy.

2010-07-16T06:25:00.000-07:00

Last night's AH adventures was a little bit slow at first but it picked up right around 11pm eastern time when most of the raids are done. Belt buckles were still selling but the one thing that is just truly perplexing are the prices for saronite ore and saronite bar.

I made a killing last night buying stacks of ore for 15g then smelting them and selling bars for 55g per stack. For some reason people needed saronite bar so I kept smelting my bars. The highest bar I sold was for 65g per stack! Considering I only invested 30 gold, heck that is an awesome deal! What makes me wonder though is the people that post the ores have the ability to make it bars yet they dont ... is it because the amount of time it takes to smelt? Or is it because they also wanna supply jcers to prospect ores? I'm not saying they should start making it bars but I'm just wondering why they just settle for ores.

I'm looking forward to this weekend mostly because I know there is going to be a lot of cheap mats on the AH. Currently sitting at 6kg, still can't believe I got this far just by investing 300g last Saturday and using my untapped crafting professions such as BS, JC, and enchanting.

Noobing it up at the AH

2010-07-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

Last night was a decent night of AH adventures. The one thing that I sold the most last night was eternal belt buckles. I sold about 10-12 of them. At one point I was the only one selling it so I kept posting it for 50g. Considering it takes about 20-23 gold to make one belt, that's a pretty good profit.

Another surprising item that kept selling was solid sky sapphire. I bought the uncut gems for 10-12 gold, turned around and sold the cut gems for 50 gold each. I sold around 7 of them. Another excellent profit!

The rest of my sales was enchant scrolls, enchanting rods, and fishing stuff. Now I am sitting at almost 5k gold. Considering I started with 300 gold last weekend I think I am not doing so bad. My goal is to reach 15-20k gold at the end of the moment.

I would like to expand though. I have an alchemy who is sitting at 300ish skill and a tailor who is at 350ish. I'm thinking of leveling them up so I can enter the alchemy and tailoring market. My approach though will be the same as blacksmithing, enchanting, and jewelcrafting, I will try to pick 2-3 items that is not too crowded and concentrate there.

As soon I break the 20k gold mark I think I can start buying tons of cheap mats like a wannabe AH player spending around 8-10k on mats. For now though I am content with just crafting a few items and collecting around 1-1.5k gold per night.

Going for Gold

2010-07-14T12:46:00.000-07:00

I have spent most of my gold in the two weeks buying mats to get a decent tanking gear, as such, I am bankrupt.

Last weekend saturday morning, I had 300 gold on my banker and 200g on my main. I decided it's time to go back to AH but this time I'm going to take it more seriously to get enough gold.

I currently have JC(441)/BS(440) on my main, an alt enchanter(390) and a miner(310). I started buying cheap materials to make some belt buckles

saronite ore - 13g/stack <- pretty cheap!
eternal water - 30g/stack
eternal earth - 120g/stack
eternal shadow - 160/stack

I made about 20 of them and started listing two at a time for 35-37g per belt. These went pretty fast especially during the weekend

Next up, is my enchanter. I decided to level up my enchanting and while I'm doing it I might as well buy some armor and weapon vellums. I was surprised how much profit scrolls were giving me. My best sellers these past days are SP to gloves, icewalker, +8 stat to chest, +atk gloves, and +def to chest.

After collecting profits last weekend. I decided to buy the recipe for +24 stam gem as I notice there are hardly any posted. Bought a stack of cheap rare blue gems, cut them, and posted two at a time. I sell them for around 45-65g. I can't touch the epic gem market since I am not 450 yet, I should be though in the next couple days or so.

I've just been messing around with the three professions I mentioned above in the past couple days and I must say I am both enjoying the AH experience and of course the gold waiting for me on my mail box.

As of last night I was sitting at 3400 gold on my bank alt. I only gained about 3k gold but you gotta remember I started with 300 gold last saturday plus I'm a complete beginner.

What I need to work on:

I need to have a system down, switching characters back and forth only to find out that I missed and item to send can get really old. I am new at this so I guess this is normal?

Adding on to the item above, I need to have a list and a spreadsheet of some sort to keep track of items that I need to craft and hopefully see a pattern of what items sells when.

Lastly, I need to get my alchemist up there. I think my hunter(lvl 62) is at 305 alchemy. I need to get it up there so I can break into the herbalism so I can start transmuting.

I need to be patient and intelligent on how to deal with AH campers. One already on to me on my belt buckle business. He keeps undercutting me and even sent me a message saying he is gold capped and he will drive the price down. My reaction? I just posted the belts and let it sit at AH as I know they will sell. One thing I should have noticed though is he kept cancelling his auctions whenever he'd post a new one(maybe those were the same items he posted?) If he goes below mat cost I will definetely buy them.

My goal before July ends is 15k-20k gold. I'm new at this and I'm learning along the way. Hopefully once I have a system and have more gold to invest, my earnings per day would increase exponentially.

Kingslayer

2010-07-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Last monday night my guild didn't have enough people to try H LK 25 man. So one of my friends started to form a group for normal LK. I asked if I can join and BAM I got the invite. Mind you that I just got back from a long break(since march 2009) and just got back about 2 weeks ago.

With my 5400 GS, my friend told me to tank LK at the beginning. He procedeed to give me the lowdown of the fight for a couple minutes. It was my first time being there and I haven't read up on the fight so I was just following instructions on the fly. I

On our third try, we got LK. Granted most of the guys are overgeared for it but hey I was grateful that they let me tag along, see LK, get Kingslayer, and then get a token to upgrade a T10.

Whats funny is I've seen Lich King dropped but I haven't seen past PP, lol? Also I don't have enough frost emblems to buy a T10 that I can upgrade ...

I got the Kingslayer title but I won't be sporting it till I see the whole instance. I'll stick with my server first titles for now =).

Thanks for stopping by.

Hacked

2010-07-14T09:36:00.000-07:00

About a week and a half ago, not even two weeks of playing WoW since I came back, my account got hacked. I am pretty good with PC and Internet security so the only reason my account has been compromised that I can think of is the critica/serious security with Adobe. If you haven't updated to 10.1 do it now. I am surprised they didn't do much effort in getting this info out more to the public. You can read about it at the technical services at WoW official forums.

Getting locked out of your account and running naked and poor around dalaran is such an awful experience. All my lvl 70+ toons got stripped. My lvl 62 DK though was not naked though so I just played that toon while waiting for my account to be restored. Blizz sent me a mail saying it takes about a week or so but they managed to give me my items back 2 days early. Because of this event, I ordered an authenticator. Took about a week to get here. I've scanned my pc for malware, spyware, keyloggers, viruses and the likes and looks like my PC is clean. Hopefully this incident won't happen to me ever again.

Back to Azeroth

2010-07-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

Hello to anyone reading this!

About a week and a half ago I decided I'd give WoW another shot since my summer classes are about to end and I figured I mess around and see what new things WoW has to offer.

All I can say is ... Whoa! The game is totally from the game I left last year March(Ulduar wasn't even out). The very first thing that I noticed is the Dungeon group finder. Holy shit that thing is nice, granted there are some negative effects on the community but overall it is pretty awesome.

My first week

I started the quest where you need to run FoS->PoS->HoR. Those 3 new instance are pretty fun and what's important is it can be finished around 30 minutes or less.
So I'm all excited but I noticed that the queue time for a DPS is around 14 minutes! Holy crap! So wanting to do more heroics I decided to bust out my 4k GS tank gear and start queuing up(not sure if less than 3 seconds would count as a queue) as a tank which brings me to ....

What the hell is up with GearScore? When did this Sh!t start? When I left there was no such thing! Only requirement was know your class and be able to follow instructions and adapt to different situations. I hate it to be honest as most groups tend to overgear it.

When we got the realm first for clearing Naxx or realm first for clearing Obsidian Sanctum, we didn't have the gearscore addon but we did do a check of gear. Our officers made sure we had the best enchants/gems and gear from heroics. I hate it how your gear score defines your for some players. Sigh, I guess this addon is here to stay ... /rant off

Ok back to happy place now

By the end of the first week I managed to amassed a good amount of emblems that I used to buy tank gear so I can tank some more. I also cleared the heroics versions for the 4 new instances. I have to say that they are very well done.

I also started doing Argent tournament dailies, now these are something new to me. I am currently one quest away to be open up the dailies for the champions

Second week
Not much upgrades for me since I have bought most of the emblem gear. I'm sitting around 4850ish GS. Only thing I want are specific drops which is starting to be a pain in the ass. My goal is to get as close to 5k GS so I can start getting invited to some random pugs for ToC 10/25.

Rekindled interest in Raiding
I also found a couple of my former guildies. I talked to the GM of their guild and as of last night I am a trial member with the recommendation of my former guildies. My problem is my gear, the only thing they have left to do is H LK 25 so you can see a pretty big gap in the gear right there. GM mentioned he first needs to see that I am willing to raid and of course see how I do. I don't expect being handed H ICC 25 gear, only thing I asked is that hopefully they have alts that will need a low geared tank like me to tank like TOC or something.

I need gold!
I started looking at my professions and decided that I want to have lots of gold. I only have about 8k gold so I need to invest those and hopefully get around 50k by the end of the month. I just wnat to be ready when Cata hits.

As you can see I'm pretty excited coming with all these "new" stuff for me and I can't wait to explore the new raid dungeons. I will keep posting updates on my toon(s) and my gold making adventures.

Another State of the Gamer post

2009-04-09T07:16:00.001-07:00

How is everyone doing? I haven't been playing games for awhile so I can't really blog about games =(. I've been busy at work as construction projects are starting to pick up and at the same time me and the wife has been working on buying a house this spring.

I've been playing COD:WaW but only when I get a text from my old friends. No new animes to watch lately really so it's been kinda boring in that department too.

It's been 2 weeks now since I last logged on WoW. I can't really find a strong reason to push myself to log in, old guild went poof and most of my friends being gone ain't really helping. I have cancelled my account and I will be waiting till the Ulduar patch comes out and hopefully still have a raid spot in my new guild =p.

I have been watching alot new Tv shows though. We started watching NCIS Season 6 via netflix (it's HD!) and I must say the show is entertaining. Started CSI:NY and so far it's ok.

Also my interest in MMA has been renewed. I was a big fan of TUF Season 1 and also have watched some fights on UFC, Pride, and WEC. Over the past week or so I got a hold of UFC 90-96 PPV fights(don't ask me how!) and WOW these guys are beast!

UFC 97 is about a week away and I'm still contemplating if I'm going to shell out the cash for the PPV. I really want to watch Anderson Silva beat the shit out of Thales Leites and of course watching Chuck fight is just pure awesome. I think if I don't have any excessive spending this month I can get away with it =).

Got Hacked

2009-03-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

Some bozo charged my debit card $147 to some company in London called Elustra LTD. Really?! I looked them up and no number and website to reach them ... nice.

I have been using my credit card online since 2003 and I haven't had this happened before ... so I guess I can eliminate what websites that I used for my primary suspects.

What's funny is how I discovered it. I was doing our monthly expenses early this morning and the fraudulent charges wasn't there yet. 30 minutes later I checked my account again and BAM! There it is! I called my bank and had my card cut off. I stopped by my bank during lunch time, got a new card and submitted the complaint and they said it can take 3-60 days till they can give me my money back.

I'll be doing a sweep on my PC again and now have to go thru all the sites that I have auto pay on ...

Also found a charge for $1 from Itunes ... I gotta call them up today and see what's going on. It's not about the $1(ok maybe it is a little bit) it's the principle!

State of the Gamer

2009-03-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about cancelling my WoW account for a month or two until Ulduar comes out but I'm not sure if I have already paid for the next month's bill ... if I did then I guess I'll just work on fishing heh.

This last weekend I've devoted alot of time into Call of Duty: World at War due to the new map packs and double xp weekend. I managed to get to my 3rd Prestige and currently on lvl 37.

I also tried out some interesting Perk Combos that other's have recommended. Check it out.

1st setup - this is my usual setup. Pretty standard.
MP40 with dual magazine.
1. W/e
2. Stopping Power +40% dmg
3. Steady aim/Martrydom

2nd setup - I've played with this setup last weekend and I must say even w/o stopping power the mp40 still dishes out enough damage. I really like this setup cause it tailors to my run n gun playstyle most of the time.

MP40 with Dual magazine
1. w/e
2. Juggernaut - +40% health
3. steady aim -

3rd setup - the ultimate stealth setup! I can't go rambo with this setup well ... I can but it's not gonna be pretty. This works awesome when I can flank an enemy and find a good spot to shoot them while theyre busy shooting someone else. I don't show up on the radar when I'm shooting or when they have a recon plan so it's been fun sneaking up on people.

MP40 with Silencer
1. Bouncing betty/claymore
2. Camouflage
3. steady aim

I've also played around with putting Double Tap on the 2nd perk, it's ok so far but I really think it depends on the map and who am I playing against to time when to use it. It's a nice change if anything.

I still have to get around completing challenges for about 4 weapons, I've been using MP40 alot which I know is not healthy =P.

COD WaW Patch First Impressions

2009-03-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday there was a patch and a map pack released for COD: WaW. There was some pretty nice fix like

*Improvements have been made to the global spawn system – players should never spawn within the line of sight of an enemy.

Well the only problem now is they spawn behind you! =)

All the rest of the fix seems pretty fair. I would have liked though if they

There was some issues/problems last night that I encountered though:

Xbox live account management was down - The day that a bunch of people needed microsoft points to purchase the map pack was the same day the server decides to crap out. Brilliant! Granted there is a sudden influx of people

Kept getting kicked out of the party - Well my screen says they left the party and when I asked them they said that I was the one who left hmm.

New maps not showing up! I get the fact that the game picks random maps for you but 3 hours of playing and not playing at least one of the 3 new maps ... whats up with that? Anyone able to play the new maps so far?

last issue is not a technical problem but more of a user ...

I seem to be having a hard time aiming my weapons. I blame it on my controller or slow reflexes in the past couple days resulting in a not so spectacular kill death ratio. It's either I'm starting to suck more or the players I'm meeting are getting more skilled OR both!

There is an issue with my controller's right stick. It's sometimes lagging behind or just slow, I can try a different one but that means I gotta use my wife's pink 360 controller ...

Did I mention it's DOUBLE EXP weekend again? Holy crap these guys are giving away exps like candy. Well I can't let this weekend go to waste then =P. Time to come up with another excuse play COD all weekend again ....

COD5 Patch day!

2009-03-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

Thanks to http://www.ps3blog.net/ I learned about the details concerning COD5 patch.

Here are some details about the patch.

*All rifle grenades fired during the first 15 seconds of Search & Destroy will be duds to prevent griefing in that game mode.
*Improvements have been made to the global spawn system – players should never spawn within the line of sight of an enemy.
*Players who equip the Bouncing Betty and melee teammates in Hardcore game modes are now credited with a team kill penalty.
*Players are now deducted 200 points for team killing the bomb planter/defuser in Hardcore Search & Destroy.
*Martyrdom no longer causes “direct impact” grenade deaths in Hardcore modes.
*Players ranked higher than the maximum allowed in the Boot Camp playlist are no longer able to play in games with lower ranked friends in that playlist.
*“Bayonet jumping” has been disabled.
*Further improvements have been made to geographical matchmaking.
*The “New” icon clears when a player has viewed an unlocked weapon X360 only.

Overall good patch imo especially the rifle grenade and respawn camping issue also add to that there is a new Map pack. Hopefully what's left of my microsoft points will be enough to buy it.

Me and my buddy are thinking about playing COD4 in between COD5 games especially when the Double XP weekend comes around. It's usually just the 2 of us and another strong player would be very much welcomed to our duo party. So send me an friend invite if you are interested in playing either COD4 or COD5. See you guys online!

Blizzard's Mega Patch

2009-03-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

I have started downloading and I checked earlier and it's at 40%. I have started this process couple days ago and it's getting around 2-3% for a good 4 hours that I let my PC download it for the past 2 days.

Anyone else having trouble with this?

In other news, I've been swamped at work and haven't really played some games this weekend. Me and the wife have been busy looking at houses/neighborhoods. The lease on our apartment is going to be up by June so we figured we start early in looking for a house.

There's always a first time for everything

2009-03-11T05:58:00.000-07:00

Last night I filled out my first application to a Guild. On all the guilds I have been in I was one of the forming members, was asked if I was interested in joining, or I just simply asked if there was a spot and got a ginvite from there.

It really felt weird writing the app being my first time and all. I've always been on the other side watching raiders putting their self out there in the hopes of joining our ranks. I've never made fun of anybody though so I hope that's good Karma =). How was your first experience apping to a guild?

If I don't get in then I don't get in and if I get kicked out of my current guild cause of my application well w/e I don't care. I think I can get in to a decent guild if I really wanted to. The guild that I'm apping is one of the best in the server and 3 of my friends from Renascent is in there so a familiar face would be awesomesauce.

EDIT: You can view my first time app and laugh it up over here.

Also I logged in on Killzone 2 last night and I got a special Icon on my rank because I was one of the top 7-10% players last week, they change it weekly. Wowza! Really?! This is a first getting an award for being one of the top players on a FPS. Wasn't expecting that at all. I've only played for about 3-4 nights last week but I did get a streak where I was either first or second scoring massive points in kills. /cheers

You can also view my Kz2 profile over here.

Update - added a link for my app online and KZ2 profile.

Your asian aren't you?!

2009-03-10T06:41:00.000-07:00

I keep getting that question especially when I was still leveling characters in WoW where I usually am one of the faster levelers and able to stay up for a long period amounts of time. Even now I still get it when playing shooters.

If you ask me I don't really know why asians in general have +5 to Fortitude in gaming and +10 in Farming gold. In real life though most small business are started by immigrants like me =P.

Well for those racist out there here is a pic for you to mull about.

XP/Progress bars and achievements

2009-03-09T10:50:00.000-07:00

Well WoW has been kind of slow for me these past few weeks but ... I managed to finally finish some of the achievements/goals that I was slowly working on.

#1 White Polar Bear! - All I can say is finally!

#2 Exalted with Kaulak - took about a weeks worth but now I got my epic fishing pole!

#3 Get Northern Vanguard achievement - I was able to finish up Argent dawn last week.

Next on the list

#1 Level up fishing so I can get the achievement "Skills to Pay the Bills".
#2 Raise another faction to exalted - Preferably Oracles for a chance to win the green proto drake.
#3 Level up another alt

Plan that got aborted
My plan for the weekend was to play Killzone 2 with my fellow clan mates and finish up Naruto: Broken bond so I can actually ship it back to Gamefly and get a new one but alas all that planning was went out of the window when I found out Saturday afternoon that it was Call of Duty:WaW double points weekend! It's too bad I found out Saturday afternoon ... if only I knew about it earlier like Friday night I could have amassed more points

My Carrot on stick ... whats yours?

All of my actions in game be it WoW or shooters was dictated by one major variable ... rewards or a sense of accomplishment.

In CoD you can rank up all the way to lvl 65 and have a bunch of achievements that you can do. After hitting lvl 65 you can then "Presitige" mode erasing all your achievements, unlocked guns, perks and starting over at Lvl 1 in exchange for a different icon besides your name! You can do this up to 10 times and get a different icon each time depending on how many times you have "presitiged". Doesn't sound fun right?

A gamer addicted to XP Bar

This is a really great example how I am sucker on games that have xp bars

During my first playthrough I thought I would stop at 65 and not Prestige. I wasn't even lvl 65 yet but I have already finish most of the in game challenges(like achievements). As soon as I hit the max lvl I then decided to just keep prestiging. Seeing my progress bar reset for in-game challenges and xp to level up was not as bad as I thought. It gave me something to look forward though. The only thing thats sucks is losing my weapons but I'll manage.

Note though that 90% of the time I only play when my friends call me to play the game. When I'm by myself it just feels like I'm grinding for points. So because of the double xp weekend me and my buddies spent about 10+ hours playing this game. Kinda silly? Yes. Immature? Yup. We had fun? Hell yeah.

Coming Soon
Also my project for recording games might come to pass on the month of April. I already spend 40 bucks for a Bluetooth headset so my next extra expenses will be taken from next month's budget. Anyway expect some videos from the games I am currently playing be it WoW or console games.

Finding the right guild and the right loot system

2009-03-06T06:40:00.000-08:00

My old GM from Renascent left the guild that I am currently in. It was because the Loot council mentioned that they would give Betrayer of Humanity to a DK alt instead of giving it to him until he proves himself. Sounds fair right?

Well the catch is he was recruited not just a raider but to help lead raids. So he is more like a sub officer or some sort. And in the raids that he was in he was helping on raid leading specially when doing Sartharion with drakes. So you would think that any guild that wants to progress pve that those efforts would be enough to warrant an upgrade to a main raider rather to an alt right?

I remembered that this guild is more of a pvp centric guild. Where most officers are heavily into arenas topping the BGs as high as ranking 2nd overall. And of course I found out that the DK alt is in their Arena team! AHA! Now the plot thickens...

My GM left right after the Naxx raid last Wednesday night. I don't blame him really.

I really dislike guilds doing loot council who has no clear purpose or hidden agendas. That loot system worked for us because we had leaders who know what they were doing and were genuinely committed in being the best PVE guild.

I have gotten several tells about applying for another guild so I checked out other guilds. To my surprise I already found 3 guilds who are recruiting DPS warriors. Now that's news! I really have a good WOW rap sheet(lol?) and I believe I can easily get into one of them if I really tried especially with my experience and current gear.

The problem is I don't want to be labeled as a guild hopper ... maybe I'll try sending my application via pm on their forums. I also have to check if I will get along with them.

I really don't want to be with jerks and players who think they are the shit, calling other players nub, baddies, stupid etc. I don't like it for 2 reasons. First, it's just not cool acting your the best and the rest are scrubs. Second, I was in the best pve guid ... and I find it really funny hearing it from them calling other names and then when the raid starts they have no FUCKING clue what to do or how to avoid fires and lava waves.

I will prolly hang out with this guild for a few more days or maybe I'll be here for a good while ... I don't know. I'll look for other options this weekend.

Me and multiplayer games

2009-03-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

One of the best things about Multiplayer games are the players, at the same time they are one of the worst things that has happened to the same games.

When my old guild decided to implode I was really thinking about quitting WoW. Losing my friends was really a bummer and I really don't wanna bother applying to another guild, server xfers etc. I was really glad an old friend hooked me up with a new guild where about 5 players from Renascent are members. It's not much but it was enough for me to keep playing. Just doing daily quests ain't going to cut it.

I got a whisper from a priest from my old guild asking me what was my plan. I really felt bad because I know he still wants to play but like me a couple days ago he is guildless. I wish him all the best and hopefully he founds a place to call home.

Meet my new Clan! The Mockers

My buddies who are playing Call of Duty(COD) are only on 1-2 nights a week and I would really like to have another group to play with on top of my COD team. I decided to purchase Killzone 2 last Friday and so far it has delivered. But I really want to meet other players, be more social, get some clan action going on.

I searched for a ps3 blog and voila I found one that is looking to add members to their clan to play with/against each other. I got the Clan invite yesterday and I gladly accepted. Heck I even bought a bluetooth headset to talk to my new clan, the headset btwy is awesome. I bought the used one to get 10% off and I got another 10% cause I had a Gamestop Card wooot! Saved me about $15. They had their first games as a clan last night but I didn't make it because Naxx raid was scheduled first >_>. I'll definetely be there next time though.

I will still play COD:WaW when my friends are online but I will be devoting my free game time in playing Killzone 2 in the next few weeks. If you have killzone 2 or planning to get one and you want a clan to hang out, check out our Clan see if it fits you.

Killzone 2 First Impressions

2009-03-03T05:40:00.000-08:00

This is not a MMORPG post but if your interested in what I have to say on PS3's latest shooter read on!

Pros

Addictive ranking system, medals and ribbons. Give me an XP bar to track my progress and I'm in! Perfect carrot on stick. The medals and ribbons ala achievements are just plain awesome. The game also gives a special badge that you can show off if you are one of the top 1,3, 6 and 10% players in the game, they update this weekly.

Playstyle choices - Killzone 2 accomodates most playstyles. From Rifleman, to medics, engineers, snipers, and squad leaders. You'll start out as a Rifleman but as you rank up certain badges/classes will be available to you. Last night I decided to be the Medic and it was hella fun. I had my assault rifle ready but as soon as one of my teammates go down I'm right there to revive them! I just recently unlocked the Engineer badges where I can set up bot sentrys that will guard an area the only downside is I only get a shotgun, I can always pick up others people gun though.

Stunning graphics. Easily one of the best looking First person shooters out there. Seeing your shadow as you run thru an alley just makes you smile.

It's just plain fun. Maybe because it just released last friday but I don't think no one can say that this game failed to deliver. Yes I do get frustrated in playing this game from time to time but it's not because of gameplay mechanics but rather it was me who was trying to Rambo my way in thru 4 opponents.

Cons

My biggest gripe is that I can't remap my buttons. Seriously most players will use the default control scheme but for players like me who like to reconfigure control layouts ... please give me an option.

My 2nd issue is the framerate. There would be times that frames AND controls feels sluggish. This is not game breaking though. I only encounter this when I'm on a 32 player mode and everybody is just everywhere not all the time but 1 in 8 games would be my guess. To counter this sometimes I would pick games with the max of 16 players which is just perfect.

Last but not the least are the spawn points. You know it really sucks to run for a mile just to get back into action but I have a good guess why they did it *cough spawn campers*

Overall

It's not perfect but gameplay, pace, graphics is just right. It's another damn good reason to keep playing first person shooters. I give it a 9/10.

Progress so far

I haven't played Killzone 2 as much as I would have liked last weekend because my buddies from COD:World at War are evil and wanted me to play with them. So I did and we had tons of fun.

That being said I still managed to get to the rank of Captain and get 8/8 Good conduct medals, 8/8 body count specialist, 8/8 kill specialist, 1/8 sidearm specialist heck I even managed to get a 3/8Medic Ribbon!

I plan on spending more time playing this week. Finishing the campaign mode would have to take a back seat as I would like to ride the wave of the influx of players on the first few weeks aka more nub kills. I would also like to complete the 8/8 Medic ribbon so I get the medic's secondary ability. From there I will level up my engineering badge then sniper! A headset would be nice but $50 bucks(blue tooth) is kinda steep.

I'll do another review a month from now to see where the game has gone, hopefully the game is still in good shape and I'm done with the campaign by then.

Homeless ... again

2009-03-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

On my last post I mentioned that I joined a reformed guild which 90% of it's members are from my old one.

Well last Friday night ,when I logged in, Herc had no Guild tag! Apparently the guild broke up only after a night or two since being formed. Talk about being unstable. I talked to a couple of friends I knew who were in that guild and they said people just started leaving and they had some officer problems/disputes.

At that point I wasn't really sure if playing WoW would be an option for me even if Ulduar comes out. I logged on Sunday around lunch time and I saw one of my friends from Renascent, he was also in the guild that broke up. I asked him what happened and he pretty much said the same thing. I told him that I was disappointed at what happened and the fact that I was homeless.

Right then and there he said he would get me in the guild he was in. He told me the Guild Master in the guild he's in is in hes 5v5 team. He then went on that the GM wouldn't wanna be kicked from his 5s and that they were rank #2 on our Battlegroup. Keep in mind, this guy likes to talk shit alot. He talked to the GM, gave me some positive feedback and a few seconds later the GM whispered me.

He told me that they already have 2 Fury Warriors but he would force one of the guys to be Protection mainly because of my gear and background(good rep from being in the former best guild in the server). I took the offer(sorry other dps warrior =/) and joined my new guild.

What I wasn't expecting when I joined though was my old GM from Renascent is also in this guild as a council/raid leader. I guess he was offered a spot in the guild to help lead raids. I thought he was quitting but it doesn't matter now. Him quitting or not the break up of Renascent was going to happen.

Back to my current guild. We did Malygos and Sartharion 2 Drakes. The execution and strat was different add to that about 50g worth of repairs and it was pretty much the same =P. Granted the skill level and experience is different but I don't care anymore if we get server first. The raid are scheduled on Wed-Thursday. Only 2 days of raiding! Works for me.

So here's hoping this guild won't go BOOM after 2 nights or 2 months.

So it Finally Happened

2009-02-27T06:50:00.000-08:00

After failing to get a raid together last Wednesday night, the Guild leader finally called it quits. I didn't show up for that raid. He said he was done with the game and is going to cancel his account.

I logged in last night with the GMOTD saying that the guild has reformed and that I should message old officers to get the guild invite. The guild leader was online the time I logged in so I said my thanks and goodbyes. I left the guild shortly after our conversation.

For a brief moment my toon was guildless. I joined my old comrades new guild. I don't even know the Guild name! A good bunch of active raiders are in the same guild so it felt like home even though we are under a different tag. I got promoted to the rank of Raider so I guess I still have my spot.

I'll give this guild a shot as I don't have the energy to apply to another guild and all that good stuff. Raiding 2-3 nights a week ain't bad anyway, plus getting an extra Betrayer of Humanity would be awesomesauce.

In other news, Killzone 2 releases today! Even the wife will go to Gamestop with me to pick up the game. There has been so much hype about this game and we all know what happens to game that are hyped to death they can either a.) crash and burn, only to survive with a few subscribers/players or b.) live up to the hype and 99% of the population are happy.

Sadly most end up on A. I'm not expecting this game to be the next Messiah, the one to save First Person shooter games(even though I would like it to be!). I am expecting a solid game though on both the Solo and Multiplayer part. I still haven't decided wether to play the campaign first then rank up on online or play the multiplayer first then slowly play thru the campaign in between games. Either way

I will definetely be posting my first impressions next week.

Daily quest and my first hate message

2009-02-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

I am currently in training till tomorrow, I just stopped by the office today to check my e-mail.
Anyway, the guild is still intact or what's left of it. I haven't seen the mass Exodus that most officers were planning to, maybe they just decided to leave on their own , quit the game, or just suck it up ... I don't know.

There will be a raid tonight. I'm not sure if I want to go.

Daily quest

I've been doing the JC, cooking and Kaulak daily quests in the past week. Good source of money but I'm mainly after the tokens, northern spices and fishing pole respectively. I think I got about 5 days left or so to get Exalted with the Walrus people.

Oh yeah I got ganked by a lvl 79 DK and a lvl 70 mage ... twice!

What I'm up to these past nights

Well the wife and I have been watching CSI Miami on my Xbox via netflix which btwy is awesome on HD. We finally caught up with the current season now we are going back to Season 6 to watch some episodes we might have missed. We currently have The House Bunny and Michael Clayton Blu-ray from Netflix so we might watch that in the next few nights.

My first hate mail/message:

As I was playing Call of Duty:World at War last night I got a message which says "PUSY!".
Now the reason he sent that was I was on a tank the first 5 minutes of the fight and I went 23 kills and 1 death.

I replied "LOL cry more nub". I guess I was looking for a fight. He replied with a voice message this time saying I was in the tank the whole time bla bla bla to which I answered "your such a bad player if you cry about tanks, deal with it! Sticky grenades and satcher charges are your friend"

He then sent me another voice message, I didn't quite get it but I think he agreed with me with a little bit of QQing?! I was expecting him cursing me like your typical teenager whose e-peen got roflstomp but nope he didn't gave me that satisfaction.

If I see him later tonight I might invite him to my party so I can teach him how to play =P. I felt sorry later but seriously don't qq ... do something about it! Adapt to your situation!

I'm usually friendly(sometimes too friendly) playing online games but that message just rubbed me the wrong way.

Another First Person Shooter on the horizon is Killzone 2 for PS3 which is going to be released this Friday. I can't wait! COD: WaW will still be my main FPS game but when my friends are not online I'll be blowing some heads off in Killzone 2. My PSN ID is spybreak4u add me if you are getting this game this weekend. My Xboxlive Tag is also Spybreak4u for anyone who wants to play COD:WaW

Last but not the least
Thanks for all the nice replies on my last post regarding the guild. I really appreciate it <3

Guild Drama! How it turned Sour

2009-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

It was inevitable I suppose.

The guild started strong, getting 3 server first and titles (in less than 3 weeks) that no one else in the server would ever get(Conqueror of Naxx, Magic Seeker, and Obsidian Slayer). Now it's on the brink of breaking apart.

I don't really know what happened but here are some of the factors in my opinion:

1.) Losing the race to get first in 3 Drake Sarth server kill - This is not the main reason but one of the factors that slowly killed our guild.

2.) People got bored - Clearing all 3 instances in 2 nights in 3 months get's REALLY REALLY boring.

3.) Domino Effect - When people start posting that they are done with the game that gets contagious.

4.) This Drama - Last but not the least this "incident". Check this out.

GL posted in the forums was made asking if people still want to continue raiding, he also mentioned his account was cancelled and will only reactivate if the guild lives on. A good amount of raiders did respond they still want to continue.

The raid formed up the next night and it was full on time! The officers were in charge. That hasn't happened in awhile. 30 minutes later the Guild leader logged on. A few minutes later he left the guild with the gbank(all the gold and mats on it). He logged on his alt and started demoting every officer that was in the raid.

We found out later that when he logged on he asked to get invited in the raid. The raid was full and

10-20 minutes later he invited his main toon back to the guild and gave the gold back.

That move alone I guess was the final nail to coffin. Raiders were uneasy and really wasn't sure where the guild is headed to. A good amount still want to raid and for those people a shaky guild isn't their best interest.

Uncofirmed Info:

A secret source has informed me that the only reason the GL opted to keep going with the guild was that he tried to join our rival guild but got declined.

The Coupdetat

After that little incident, rumors started spreading that a majority of the officers and a good amount of the core raiders was going to

One of my friends and fellow dps warrior already joined another guild. He asked me if I was angry, I replied not at all! Why would I?

I told him "you have to look out for yourself first". He wanted to raid and the environment of the guild that he was in was no longer in line with his goals.

What's my position in this issue?

/shrug

I wanna see how this all plays out for the next 2 days. I will prolly stop raiding for now till Ulduar is about to come out and then I'll go from there.

I didn't like the rumors about the GL appint to our rival guild add to that the fact that he left the guild because he didn't get invited to the raid that was full.

Will I leave the guild and join the coupdetat guild if formed?

I don't know. I guess if most of the core raiders are in there I would join. I gotta be realistic though. I gotta see if that new guild will have a stable leadership that can lead it thru the new instance. I don't have the energy to app to another guild so playing with the people I know is really ideal for me.

I'll make another post in the next few days if anything major comes up.

How I made 2k gold in 2 days by accident

2009-02-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

Sounds like something you see on an Ad right?

For most people 2k gold is pocket change but the interesting part about my experience in the past 2 days was it wasn't in my plan.

It first started when I decided to drop mining and pick up Jewelcrafting. My main reason for this was from a min/max standpoint. I wanted to maximize my stats as much as I can and I thought Jewelcrafting and Blacksmithing would be a good combo. I guess I was just trying to secure a raid spot when Ulduar does come out.

My project was finished after 5 days. It was a long process but I'm very pleased with the uber gems that I can now carry. Woot!

Then I remembered all the items that I sent to my disenchanting alt and AH alt ... which is well over 150+ items. Instead of letting them rot on the mail like I usually do I decided to just sell them at the Auction House with the goal of getting at least half of my investment back(around 500 gold was the goal).

2 days later my alt has acquired well over 1900 gold from the AH from all the "junk" and excess materials from leveling JC. I sold a bunch of low cost mats and gems around 99 silver to 3 gold. There were 3 things as I was leveling that stuck in my mind and I think helped me boost my AH profits.

Good investments

First one was me buying a stack of bloodstone for 2-2.5 gold each(20-25 gold a stack). I then cut a Bold Bloodstone and sold them for 9g 99sil. To my shock the first 5 actually sold after a minute and I wasn't even done posting items on AH. 2 days later I sold around 40 bold bloodstone from 10g to 12g(I tested how high could I go). If you do the math that's 400% Return of Investment + my JC skills!

Second was prospecting ores. I saved a bunch of saronite ores on Herc before I dropped mining, around 200 ores I think. If I knew I would be getting that much gems from them I would have cleared my bag sooner. This article does an excellent job in explaining how you can get profits thru prospecting ores.

Third was disenchanting rings and necklaces. I have sold 3 stacks of infinite dust last night and I felt poor for the guy I was undercutting. It was his fault though. First he posted A LOT of them flooding the market ... second was he put them for 48 hours. Which means I can easily undercut his gems and the best part was I was the only one during that 2 hour time frame last night posting dust.

I wish I had done the switch sooner. Most likely I will continue to take advantage of this proffesion, not full time but enough to keep me afloat.

I took up JC for the gems for the additional stats but the added bonus of making gold at the same time is very welcome.

900+ ores, 1k gold and 8 hours later

2009-02-17T06:34:00.000-08:00

Actually I think it's more than 8 hours as it took me most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon to FINALLY get 350 Jewelcrafting. Hooray! I did it just before the raid and even managed to get 3 Dragon's eye thanks to a friends help <3.

Friday was all about mining ... and mining and mining on my DK and Warrior gathering thorium and Saronite ores respectively. Come Saturday the excruciating pain of leveling jewelcrafting from the ground began. I got up to 280ish then called it a day. I then finished it up on Sunday.

The worst part of all of that is the process of sending items back and forth in between 3 characters add to that me running to the mail box everytime I run out of space.

Determined to get at least some of my investments back I sold a bunch of stuff(from leveling JC) yesterday on the AH. I easily did about 100 post. At the end of the night I got about 950 gold from all of my AH post that day. The items I was posting weren't expensive but ranging anywhere from 2.5 gold to 20 gold.

To break even, in my opinion I need to make 2k - 2.5k gold. I included the ores and oppurtunity cost. I will no doubt post another set tonight. Hopefully by the end of the week I reach my goal.

Oh and of course Betrayer of Humanity drop that Sunday run! The week where I agreed to get switched to group 2 =). My fellow warrior has to be pissed about that since I left it up to him which group he wanted to go and of course he pick group 1 last week ha ha ha. There are 2 items left that I need from 25mans: bracers from Gothik and the cape from Kelthuzad. I'm still working on my fishing though maybe I might work on it while watching tv ... I need a wireless keyboard so I can just sit on the couch.

The guild bank provided the Abys Crystals and after a few minutes after the raid I got it enchanted with Berserker. I also have berserker enchant on my offhand now and I know they both can stack but I'm wondering if the static 110 AP on the offhand will be better since berserk on offhand will proc less.

WoW is pretty boring atm and it's been awhile that I spent this amount of time on it during a weekend. I would do achievements or arenas but it's not really an interest for me right now. I guess the best thing about WoW is there are small stuff that can keep you entertained or at least give you a goal even when your are playing casually. An example for me would be leveling JC, posting on AH and leveling fishing.

Netflix via Xboxlive kept me entertained while leveling JC and selling stuff at the AH. I get bored really easy if I'm just doing 1 thing on my PC. I started watching Numb3rs Season 4(yes I know I'm a geek) while playing WoW and so far It's been entertaining.

Project Status

2009-02-12T06:49:00.000-08:00

I mentioned on my last post about me dropping blacksmithing for jewelcrafting for maximizing my tradeskills as much as I can.

I'm currently at Tanaris right now on my DK mining some mithril. I think I need about 120 mithril ores then I have to move onto thorium. I must say that the extra mount speed bonus from the Unholy tree is really helping me out.

I've also flew around Borean Tundra(on my warrior) to get some cobalt ores for prospecting in the future. I'm prolly going to do another fly over on that zone and then head to the infamous Sholazar Basin to get some Saronite.

I didn't go to the main group this weekend in clearing Naxx, I'll be going with Group 2 instead. It was in the GMOTD that this Sunday will be the last Group 2 Naxx raid. There are no details yet but what it means basically for me is if Betrayer doesn't drop this sunday, my chances on getting one will be cut in half since I have to group together with another Fury warrior who also needs it.

Back to my project. I really want to finish it before this Sunday or the latest before the next Naxx raid after this week's reset. I would be gaining around an extra 60+ Str from both JC and BS.

Maximizing Tradeskills or just plain Crazy?

2009-02-10T07:51:00.000-08:00

I currently have blacksmithing and mining but I am in the process of getting rid of mining for jewelcrafting. This would really help on min-maxing my stats. I know a good amount of players in my guild has 2 crafting proffesions and gathering proffesions on their alt so I figured I'd joined the club.

Making all raiding members min-max their proffesions will not work in my guild. The only time it worked really well and everybody in the guild was up for it was waaaay back in the 40man raids where we ended up getting in the top 5 U.S Horde guild when Naxx just came out. Those days ... are over. Even with Ulduar coming out gear check won't require everybody to be 100% min-max to clear it.

Right now I am leveling up mining on my lvl 62 DK. All I can say is ... finding Tine ore is a B!tch! I'm stocking up materials on the way so the minute I drop mining I can immediately proceed to leveling JC.

I figured getting extra sockets from blacksmithing and extra stats gems from JC is a really good combo be it tanking or DPS.

I must admit that this decision has got to do with my friend, who is a fellow TG warrior, is beating my Bloodthirst by a good margin. Granted there are small(and I mean small) differences in gear but I can't let the gap widen or else I'll find myself on the bench come Ulduar. That would really make me a sad panda, I live for the first boss kills after a dozen or so wipes =). There's something about learning an encounter, adapting and beating it.

The drawback of course is losing my gathering proffesion AND having to level up my alts in order to max them. My druid who is almost lvl 71(enchanting and skinning) and my dk lvl 62(mining). I have invested about 2 hours into this endeavor and it looks like I need around 6 hours more!

Hopefully I can finish this project of mine by the end of the week.

Betrayer of Humanity

2009-02-06T06:16:00.000-08:00

Didn't drop last night! I'm the one next in line for it and no luck for 2 weeks so far. Plus on our quest for the Immortal achievement we mega failed at our first boss, Noth. /bonk

I noticed a slight increase in my dps last night but something was off. I was missing alot of white attacks and even some yellow attacks! My hit was only at 4.27% + 3% from talents which leaves me not hit cap by 73%.

I still can't figure out that why I can't reach 8-9k Bloodthirst crit like my fellow Fury warrior. He's up by 80 AP and I can't find anything else. I only did 4700 dps at patchwerk last night where he did 5200 with his group last Wednesday.

I was crit and rage starved for most of the fight and some unlucky miss streaks. I can try and put icewalker on my boots instead of the 32 AP, other than that I can't think of anything else. Maybe I can switch my Mirror of Truth trinket for Grim Toll for more Hit but that will leave me with less crit. I guess I have to sit down and look at my options this weekend before the next raid reset.

Raid schedule changes

2009-02-03T07:20:00.000-08:00

After 2 months of clearing Naxx on Tuesdays with the added bonus of lag ... our officers finally moved clearing Naxx with the main raiders on Thursdays. That took awhile, seriously. We are aiming for "The Immortal" title. Most of the group has already received their "The Undying" title so it's really possible that we get it this week.

I haven't really log on WoW unless raiding or do a daily quest or two. I've been dabbling on other games and so far it's been a fun experience.

When Ulduar comes out I can see myself changing up my night schedules just like what I did when still learning 25man Naxx(only lasted a week). So here's hoping it takes us at least 3 weeks to clear Ulduar although in reality it will be cleared in a week or 2 and I really don't see anything wrong with that since there will be encounters like Sartharion where we as a raid have the option of tougher difficulty and better loots.

New season of Heroes has started! Wooo! Big fan here . . . can't wait for them to kick Nathan's ass. Also I wonder how Cylar is going to go about now. Is he going to side with the good guys now or go alone and take on the guys who wants to round them up? The latest episode of Gundam 00 S2 was pretty nice also. The ending was a bit sad but now I wonder if Marie's old personality will come back for revenge mmmm... The episodes of bleach and naruto was meh. This is why I prefer Animes that ends after 25 episodes ... just get it over with! Also survey says that audience usually starts losing interest on a series around the 19th-21st episode. So if there is no sign of ending or you are just showing fillers then chances are they won't watch that series anymore(not only limited to anime series).

Been busy at work so far which is nice. I sent back Fallout 3. I like the game but ... I just don't have the time right now to devote consecutive hours of gaming. I feel like Fallout 3 is one of those games where I tend to forget what was the last thing I did and my next goals are. Right now I just want to fire up a game almost mindlessly and go from there(i.e. First person shooters, WoW daily quest ... uh oh!). I think I'm getting Resistance 2 or Rockband 2. Either one of them should be fun.

We just got a Wii

2009-01-30T11:16:00.001-08:00

Actually it was the wife's idea. She brought it up 2 weeks ago about she wanting to have a Wii console. I think it was the Wii fit and playing classic mario games that led to this.

So we take a looked at our monthly finance spreadsheet to see where we are at and we've both been pretty good even during the holidays, really surprising. We don't have any kids/babies(yet) so it's really really easy to save/invest money. So financially it was ok for her to buy a Wii, I wasn't up against it anyway I'm up for some Nunchucks action. Wooo!

The wife stopped by couple minutes ago to drop the Wii that she bought and here I am staring at this white box wondering what other games I can buy to enjoy this console. Zelda comes to mind and that's it! I gotta do some research on the hot games for the Wii and prolly gamecube .. hmm prolly the re-worked Metal Gear Solid 1?

Tonight after the wife knocks herself out playing Wii Sports I'm going to download nintendo classic games, particularly super mario brothers 1 and 2. Should be an exciting and fun weekend.

Blizz threw a bone at me

2009-01-29T09:57:00.000-08:00

Well to be specific I got the Jawbone(I know .. I tried), a 2H mace from Heroic Maexxna. I'm grateful and all but the problem now is to min/max my weapons ... I have to:

1. Re-enchant Armaggedon with +AP(it has mongoose atm).
2. Enchant Jawbone with Mongoose because it's going to be my main hand.

And then ... when Betrayer does drop(I'm next in line) ... I'm going to have to re-enchant Jawbone with +110 AP then put Berserker on Betrayer.

That is alot of enchanting and re-enchanting!

I might give in today and do it anyway ... sigh

I also got Fury of Five Flights last night from 3D Sartharion. I'm going to replace Grim Toll despite the amount of ArP it gives me, the hit it provides is meh. I thought about replacing Mirror of Truth for it but the crit and proc just outweighs Grim Toll alot. I'm looking forward in using this trinket next raid reset will be interesting how much AP I can push for.

Fishing

I guess I've been out of the loop in the fishing business since I just found out about the fish food that gives +40Str. Seriously! I'll be afk fishing tonight hopefully this will end the mammoth massacres(80 AP food) that I participate in during non raid days.

Fallout 3 ... the first 30 minutes

2009-01-27T06:19:00.001-08:00

Fallout 3 arrived yesterday afternoon in the mail but I didn't get to play it till around 10 p.m. after a session of COD5 with my old friends.

Switching from a fast pace FPS game to an RPG game is really a drag at first but I finally calm downed after a few minutes into the game.

I've finished the initial distribution of my stats and honestly I have no idea what I was doing. Still undecided wether to boost my physical attributes frst or the hacking/stealth ones. I guess I'll find out later when it's too late hah.

I first started out as a baby setting up your character's physical trait then to toddler distributing my stats. Later on it was my 10th bday, meeting new characters and the introduction of some of the game's mechanics.

Then I'm a 16 year old taking an aptitude test to determine what kind of job I would hold ... I was told I was going to be a chaplain! Maybe it was because I answered all the questions of what a "good" citizen would say. I don't know if I can take the test again.

The last part where I saved was I'm 20 something years old who just woke up realizing that I need to run for my life! I saved at that point and called it a night.

Things are looking interesting so far. I prolly won't have time tonight since it's raid time.

Pro tips for COD5 Veteran

2009-01-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

So I guess your a masochist for wanting to finish any campaign in the Call of Duty Series in Veteran mode.

Here are a few advice that I can give based on my experience with the latest installment.

1.) Use Cover and crawl alot - You will learn this really quick on your first level on veteran.

2.) It pays to be agressive sometimes - One negative thing about COD5 campaign is sometimes they put you in the worst part to get out of chokepoint. There were multiple times that I had to charge forward while taking quick headshots along the way so I won't get cornered by those pesky grenades.

3.) Make good use of your teammates - you can take advantage of this by trying to find "invisible line" that when you cross it your teammates advanced. While they are advancing they just miraculously get better at aiming and kill your enemies alot quicker.

After they advance then decide from there if you can advance again. If that is almost impossible then I suggest start picking off enemies and start crossing that invisible line once more.

This might be considered a cowardly act but I do like it better than me getting my face blown off in a matter of seconds.

4.) Smoke grenades - these are a life saver. Don't waste them but at the same time don't be too cheap! Use them wisely.

5.) Throw back grenades - COD5 is known for being World of Grenades. It really gets ridiculous. Only thing you can do is throw them back. Luckily most grenades in campaign takes awhile to go BOOM.

6.) After a frustrating session, save your game and try again the next day. This has worked really well for me. I tend to think abit more clearer the next day when I'm not all agitated.

Tough COD5 Veteran Mission tips

1. One on One Sniper action - this one took me an hour to beat. The trick is get a good place to hide where you can only see 1-2 windows. If anything you can shoot at his shoulder when he is up against a wall. Your bullets go thru walls remember?

2. Destroying Flak 88s - one of the most retarded missions. One advice will be don't forget to use the Panzershrek laying around. They will show zero on the ammo count but don't forget it's already loaded

If you are stuck on a mission even if its not on veteran mode feel free to ask.

I have finished all but COD3 of the COD series on veteran mode so far this one seems to have the most grenade spamming bots in it. Be prepared to get frustrated. I'm not exaggerating when I say you want to throw your controller at your tv out of nerd rage. But please don't, big screen tvs are not cheap! Unless you want an excuse to get a new tv. *wink

My project for recording my Xbox360/Ps3 games will have to be postponed in another month or so /sigh. It's a bummer but I have to allocate my time/resources to something else.

I have 2 main reasons for this project.

1.) To share with my brothers and friends to show what I've been up to.
2.) To help other gamers on tough levels. I know there are standard videos on youtube but who knows I might help a poor soul out there.

In other news

The wife is thinking about buying a Wii console. I was all acting cool and all saying it's up to her but I'm really excited hah. Best part is it comes with the wii sports games.

Also finished MGS4 on normal and I got the Pigeon Rank at the end. It's a rank you get when you finish the whole story w/o killing anybody. My next goal will be to go thru the game w/o being detected. Will be a tough one but I know I can pull it off.

I'm about to start school again, going to join the late start classes but it's all good since I'll be getting money from my G.I. Bill regardless.

Code Geass series review

2009-01-23T12:59:00.001-08:00

Wow what a ride! Seriously! This anime will be easily on my top 5 best anime series. I'm not surprised this series won tons of awards last year.

The wife and I really had a good time episode after episode. This is one of the few series that we have watched together(cause if I skip ahead she'll get mad).

They really had strong characters. Probably too many characters but nonetheless the main characters are pretty solid and they are not your typical cliche characters. The story was pretty good. The plots and twists in the entire series was just out of control. Voice acting and music were also A+.

The overall pace is alright but at the end of season 2(last 7 episodes) it felt things were going way too fast. Season 1 was more ... hmm whats the word ... organized? Although sometimes it felt like I didn't know where the story is headed Season 2 is still strong.

The ending although sad(I almost cried ... almost) nicely wraps up the series. I don't really want to give away too much.

For those not familiar of animes. This isn't like the shows you watch on cartoon network. It's the opposite. A good anime will have a good story, plot, interesting characters, and good animation. If it doesnt make you want to watch past the first 2 episodes then it's a good indication it's a bad one, at least for me.

If your interested in watching the series you can download them thru torrent or you can sign up on sites like www.narutofan.com and download the series from there. If anything just download the first episode and go from there =P. Remember Code Geas R1 = Season 1 and r2 is season 2.

I'm back to watching Gundam 00 2nd Season which is shaping up to be another winner.

Picking my Gaming Genre

2009-01-23T08:30:00.000-08:00

The first game I played involving a controller was Mario Brothers on a FamiCom/SNES one of the oldest consoles that was released. So I guess I got a thing or two on platform games.

I was introduced to LAN gaming and First Person Shooters playing Counter Strike back in 2000. Now this game was addictive. Best part was my 2 younger brothers was also into it, it was also the worst part. Our parents would know where I was at cause of them two! We would join city tournaments and we usually end up 3rd place-5th place. We would go city to city looking for good players and would challenge them sometimes for money. It was a fun experience

My 2nd LAN game was Diablo II. My first dose of RPG games. Click, click, click and click. It wasn't an MMORPG but it was immersive enough.

I was also into Real Time Strategy games. Command and Conquer Generals was my favorite of them all. We made a network during my Technical Training School days at the Air Force. Kept us out of trouble for the most part.

From LAN games I started poking my nose around online games. Some of the games were Killzone, NBA live series, C&C Generals, Champions of Norrath, and Counter Strike. Eventually it would lead me to a game called World of Warcraft, my first MMORPG back in 2004.

By playing games that promotes multiplayers I came to learn and love different game genres.

I guess interacting with other gamers was more fun for me be it killing dragons or shoving an MP40 up their asses.

Currently my favorites are MMORPGS and FPS online.

Now most FPS has a progress bar with rewards just like MMORPGS! One of the notable ones that started this trend was COD 4: Modern Warfare. I'd still play the game even w/o the xp bar though what they did was brilliant. I get to see some progress, do some achievements, get better guns later on and still pwn nubs!

I usually do my gaming on Consoles when I'm not chasing dragons and trolls. The thought of playing shooters using a controller couple years ago was horrifying. Thankfully the Xbox360s controller is perfect for shooter games.

I can't really pinpoint why I like MMORPGs. It's certainly a mix of things. I like doing quest, just getting lost on my pixelated adventurer. I also like the thought of beating a scripted encounter with good coordination and strategy which results in a feeling of accomplishment and phat purple loots.

I also like a good action/adventure game from time to time, Uncharted:Drake's Fortune is a good one and of course how can we not mention the Metal Gear Solid series. Single player RPG games are "alright" I don't really finish them as I usually get sidetracked by doing tons of sidequest. I think I got Fallout 3 coming in the mail by next week so we'll see how that goes. I haven't really played Fabled or Fabled II. I tried Oblivion but damn that game is too long and too open ended. I only finished Final Fantasy X under my belt.

It's been awhile since I played some RTS games. Now that I think about it I might reinstall C&C later tonight. There hasnt been alot of new release for them(RTS games). I personally think it's dying and it is past its era. With Halo Wars coming out though who knows /shrug.

You know what's really tough to find? Finding gamers who are into both MMORPGs and Shooters or at least the same games that I play. I get a feeling of being a loner whenever I ask in guild chat who plays some FPS.

Loot System Discussion EPGP vs DKP vs Loot Council

2009-01-22T11:45:00.000-08:00

Oriniwen discussed about how their guild has handed loot distribution. They used EPGP system. You can read all the juicy details here.

The emphasis of this Loot system is rewarding people with the most effort but at the same time trying to equally distribute loot amongst all raiders.

Here are some problems that Orin's encountered with DKP. I will also write down what we did as a guild back in Vanilla WoW when we were doing 40man Naxx.

1.) People hoarding DKP and disappearing, then later show up with their UBER MEGA DKP points.

EPGP Solution - 10% decay every week.

The only problem, although minor, is the players who raids and werent just lucky to get any items cause of RNG and this could go on for weeks. They are still in the same ladder position but their buying power went "poof".

What we did in Vanilla WoW

You need at least an 80%(I think it was 85%) attendance in the past 2 weeks to be able to loot/bid. This was really needed when we were learning 40man Naxx back then. But on the other hand, players got those DKP points for a reason. We believed that you did your part when we needed you so we didn't use dkp decay or anything. 80% restriction did the job though so current players won't throw a fit.

Also DKP points acquired in Naxx and MC/BWL/AQ were in different database. There were tons of old players who had tons of dkp when we were still doing MC/BWL/AQ. The concern was brought up so everyone starting from scratch in Naxx was just the only way.

I can see alot of guilds in Wrath separating Tier 7 and Tier 8 DKPs to give those new and upcoming members a chance.

2.) New members winning items over old members with negative dkp.

EPGP Solution - new members can't bid need unless they have earned x amount of EP.

What we did in Vanilla WoW

Simple. If they are only trial they can't win over main raiders. Plus they can't loot anyway till they have enough % of attendance unless it's going to be sharded.

Upsides of EPGP

1.) They can reward people who are not in the raid.

We also did that too. People just had to farm certain amount of mats that we need for pots etc and that would translate to DKP.

2.) Penalize people.

Any system that has points which directly translates wether people get loot or no can be used as a disciplinary tool.

I can see some areas where people can take advantage though. Just like what Orin said if no one else is going to bid why pay the full price? Just go greed with 50% of the price. You can expect the same problem if an item can only be used by 2-3 people. They can conspire to just greed so when a ring or token drops where theyre up against 5+ players they have more to spend.

Overall I think with the right officers and raiders this will play out as one of the most fair loot system.

We just tweaked our DKP system a little bit and you'll see alot of those going around in various guilds changing it according to their needs.

What my Guid does(no it's not better)

We use the dreaded Loot Council. Hurry run for the hills! We don't use DKP anymore.

Then you might ask why the hell did I went thru all that post defending DKP? Well I wasn't really defending I was just comparing how we handled the same issues they had.

Our loot council doesn't really focus on equally distributing loot at first but rather it adjusts to what the raid needs for progression so that we can beat it in the shortest amount of time.

We also did it with Four Hourseman back when it was a 40man Raid. Tanks were priority to get their set piece bonus. We could have killed him anyway w/o loot council but we just killed him earlier maybe 2-3 weeks early cause of what we did instead of waiting for another set of tokens to drop.

We did it when 25 Naxx came out gearing tanks first.

We did it again when learning 3D Sartharion. We funneled our upgrades to the dps classes seeing that's what we needed to make the final push.

Our officers are pretty good in assesing if we need more heals or dps on a certain encounter. It was actually the holy paladin officer who voted that dps classes gets priority until we get the kill for 3D.

We do have a system in place called the Gear Score Sytem to aid the loot council.

Here are a few rules in our Gear Score System.
1.) Everyone is expected to have the best gear outside of raiding. Like your wearing a blue gear instead of the X drop from a heroic Y or the one from the Emblem of Heroism Vendor. If you don't thats minus .5 GS.
2.) Gems and Enchants. If you don't have the best in slot for your class/spec that's minus .25 per gem and enchant on each slot. Also take into account how you distribute your gems for bonus and meta gems.
3.) Everyone starts at 10GS. You at least need a minimum of 8 GS to raid. I think it's 9 now.
4.) Fucks ups will result in minus GS.

An exception would be spending 1.5k gold enchant on a weapon that you'll be replacing in a matter of weeks. Another one would be putting +10stats on a blue quality chest(but your suppose to have farmed emblems for your t7 chest anyway!)

How does it work?

What happens is if you want the item announced in Raid Warning you sent a tell to the officer and link the item that you will be upgrading from.

And from there who knows? Actually I think they have been fair distributing loots. Our GM tends to reward consistent raiders by funneling loots to them. There's been so many nights where I got 4+ gear in one run.

After we have cleared naxx and malygos the next week there were no more tank first priority

it's a fair game from there. For offspecs it's usually random roll unless a person respecs back and forth often for the guild.

Sometimes I do question how they distribute loots but I can't really do anything. So far it evens out in the long run and everyone gets their upgrade.

Loot council will always have drama and is the most susceptible to corruption. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. They do loot council because they can afford it. Sometimes I wish they would do dkp but that would go against the main goal of the guild, to get server first kills.

EDIT: I don't think loot council will work on a guild that is not progressing or doing well. How would they expect me to pass an item to a tank where we have been stuck on that encounter for a month? I pass loots cause I want to beat clear a dungeon faster and in return we get loot faster.

And they would all go down

2009-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Well hopefully everyone had an awesome patch day. It was really bad last night. I disconnected about 5 times during the raid grrr >_<.

We did DK wing, avoiding Abom wing due to lagfest for the first 2 hours. But I guess it wasn't just on Abom wing! What should have taken 3 hours took 4 hours.

We managed to at least get this achievement last night

I really liked the changes they implemented for Fury Warriors. So I did a couple of things to my gear before the raid.

- bought the emblem of valor boots and put AP replacing my Iron spring jumpers which had alot of hit

- went and bought glyph of Whirlwind cause it adds dmg now instead of an additional target.

- regemmed chest and neck piece. I just exchanged socket colors but jsut taking more advantage of the +ap on the ring ditching the +hit from the chest.

It was really laggy last night. Good dps plate drops.

Check out the max tick for my deep wounds though. New personal high for me.

This was from Thaddius where I did 7800+dps with +dmg buffs but still that's some sick DOT.

I got this one from you know who

Pretty nice belt, I'll be putting a gem(16str) on that belt and then removing the expertise gem from my leggings for 16crit.

I also got this one from Malygos last night

Best boots till Ulduar really.

All these small upgrades here and there will come to play when the new instance comes out and it's back to me fighting(or justifying) my spot in the raid. Should be fun!

Betrayer of Humanity dropped last night and as planned(or as they planned)it was handed over to a Ret pally /shrug. It's not a whole waste but we'll see tonight on 3 drake sartharion and next week on how I'll be keeping up on dps with my so-so weapons.

3D Sarth tonight hopefully wouldnt last longer than an hour. I'm eyeing for that helm mmmm....

3 Day Weekend Plans

2009-01-16T11:45:00.000-08:00

Polar Bear

I'm not giving up on you Mr. Polar Bear! I'll still do my dailies just incase the RNG gods finally smiles upon me.

Movies and Animes!

We got just received War and Hellboy II Bluray from netflix so we might knock one of those out tonight. Prolly Hell Boy. I'll do a /random 1-2 to decide.

Going to watch Code Geass and Gintama(reffered by Brandon). I find it relaxing actually especially when the wife is also into it.

Achievements!

Going to work on my xbxlive achievements. I want to reach around 18k or close to 20k(currently at 16k+) before I make the switch to playing a game on PS3 if its released on multiplatforms. Going to work on those trophies.

Anyway here are my library of games that I might play this weekend:

Left 4 Dead. I still have yet to finish one of the levels cause of some unfortunate pairing with FPS challenged players . I think thats a nice way to putting it =P. This will be my main game for the weekend.

I'm also playing COD World at War campaign on Veteran but I'm stuck on the 2nd to the last mission. Talk about grenade spamming these guys have an infinite amount of them when playing Veteran. I might have to back down and play the last 2 missions on Hard mode. Prolly play some coop missions online too to change it up abit. When my buddy that took a vacation to hawaii comes back I'll no doubt spend a good amount of time on this one.

I don't really find the motivation to play the multiplayer part longer than 30 minutes unless one of my RL friends logs in. I guess thats where it comes down to for me.

Gears of War 2. Campaign was no doubt a blast but I'm not touching the multiplayer again till the patch rolls outs this month. I'm really disappointed with Epic on this one. Like COD I'll prolly do some online co-op missions this weekend. Hit me up if you want to play Campaign Co-op.

Guiter Hero 4. Although it's not the best game of the year I and the wife do have a good time when we rock out. I'm still getting used to the drums. Whenever she's on the vocals I switch back to lead guitar but we tend to avoid this setup when its around midnight hehe. I'm prolly going to rent Rock Band 2 since the peripherals from GH4 "should" work.

Metal Gear Solid 4. I'm still mad/bitchy/enraged that there are no trophies/achievements arrgghh... if they release them this month I have no problem playing thru the game again. I'm still playing the game although this time my goal is to not kill anybody but to use Tranquilizer gun on everybody including all the bosses. It's been tough so far but oh man has it been a blast.

Too many games so little time /shrug. I will probably only end up playing 2-3 games that I mentioned and it won't be a 4 hour marathon either.

That's it for me this week. I'll be back on Tuesday.

Code Geass, Death Note and Media Server

2009-01-16T07:17:00.000-08:00

I've heard good things about Code Geas R2 so I decided to give it a shot. I watched the first episodes(couple days ago) and it was interesting enough that I thought I'd watch the whole first season before going in too deep.

So I started watching the series right from the beginning last night and I must say I'm impressed. It wasn't your typical anime with the typical plot and storyline. I'll know if an anime is worth my time in the first 2 episodes and this one definetely kept me wanting for more always wanting to hit play on that next episode.

No amount of graphics/designs can save an anime with a poor story or uninteristing characters. The key is to get your viewers involve/interested not just amaze them with all those explosions(I'm looking at you Holywood!).

The wife even got into it even though she started watching at episode 3. We watched the series all the way to episode 9 last night and even though we wanted to watch more(at least I did) it was time to go to bed.

I also finished watching the final Episode of Death Note yesterday.

This has got to be one of the most intellectual animes out there. There is no distinction of who are the good guys from the bad guys in this one. The writers left it up to the viewer to decide that. I highly recommend this one.

I only had about 20 mintues to mess around my 360. I played some Devil May Cry 4 but wasn't really into it. Something is off I can't quite put my finger on it though.

Oh did I mentioned that I watched all those animes at my TV thru my PS3? I use Java PS3 Media Server. All you need to do is install the program on your PC and it detects your PS3 if they are in a network. From there you don't need to worry about codecs and stuff. Just browse your computer thru your ps3 and pick a movie/song to play! Pretty awesome. I can't wait for more programs that will fully utilize the PS3's power.

Sartharion with 3 Drakes finished!

2009-01-15T05:40:00.000-08:00

Finally!

Sartharion with 3 Drakes is crossed of my to do checklist.

Last night I was late to log in but for some reason one of the players in the raid kept dieng so they subbed me in, dammit I thought I was going to be able to watch TV while waiting outside the instance!

The second attempt when I got in the raid was where we got the kill.

Our MT died while transitioning from 2nd to 3rd drake but the tank for adds quickly picked him up. He blew shield wall and last stand while the MT was being rezzed and buffed. For melee the fight required us to move all the time which was really annoying. I think we did a good job though with our dps and us not dieng on firewallsm, voidzones, and taking care of the adds when taking the portal.

I also got another title from the achievement last night, check it out.

So .... uuuh we don't have anything to kill until Tuesday >_>. That's fine with me I wanna finish some questing myself =). Sorry no video like I promised I'll try next week though who knows it might help some guilds defeat this encounter sooner rather than later.

If you have any questions regarding the fight I'd be happy to give my 2 copper.

Why we fight

2009-01-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

Recent discussion at Tobold was the question why Sartharion 3 Drake was unpopular

Common answers were (I summarized it)

Sartharion with 3 drake is not worth the effort, gold, time, learning curve, getting yelled at, frustration for getting those extra items.

This is actually true when you look at risk vs rewards but I'll elaborate later why we do it.

This is the hardest encounter ingame (excluding doing achievements like Immortal) but I guess you didn't know because you were too busy to whining how easy WoW 25man raiding is.

Some comments mentioned stopping at 2 drakes get those extra loots and just ditch the last drake for the mount.

If your guild can do 2 drakes chances are your pushing for 3 drake regardless of the risk vs reward factor. I don't personally buy it but I guess if you guild stops at 2 drakes /shrug thats how they roll.

WHY WE RAID

It's not all about loot

I don't wanna come out like a self righteous prick. But really sometimes it's not about the loot.

Of course I raid because I want to see improvements on my character like getting purple pixels. I'm not gonna lie I want purplz too you know.

But I guess like most of my guildies I wanna put those Epics to use instead of just looking pretty at Dalaran.

What good are those epics that you looted off the easy 25man raids when you are not going to use every bit of stat that they have to its fullest?

We keep wiping the floor with Sartharion 3 drake because at the end of the day it's how we decide to play the game. We want to see progress, we want to beat this boss because we know we can do it.

My argument is give those same players who say they won't do 3 drake some sort of handicap to beat and they will gladly finish the encounter and complain that it was too easy and they were robbed off the true experience. WTF?

Also take note that most of the people that are saying 3 drakes are not worth are using the word I more. While people who attempts 3 drake usually have my guild, in our guild, and we more often =P.

What does this mean? I'll leave it up to you.

Are we being elitist? No were not it's just how we decided to play the game. Infact we believe all guilds should try 3 drake sartharion.

If you can't do 3 drake Sartharion don't hate and drive people off from doing it and at the same time labeling the ones who do as jerks or w/e.

This will all be trivial when Ulduar gear comes out so everyone will get to beat this encounter anyway sooner or later.

Naxx and Sartharion(again)

2009-01-14T07:38:00.001-08:00

We started to pull at 8:35 pm EST.

We first ventured into Abom Wing

Patchwerk

Well me and the other fury warrior pull 4200 DPS which isn't bad at all but we ended up 9 and 10 ... LOL?

We didn't get in too early cause the 2nd tank wasn't hit yet so we were afraid to go in.

BUT STILL ... 9th and 10th? I can't wait till Blizz nerfs Rogue's HAT Spec. You guys know how rigged this spec is? It is just ridiculous right now. I just can't wait for the patch. It won't fix all imbalances but it should help a little bit.

The rest of the night was Offspec night

All items was rolled for offspec(if not sharded) it was insane. I won a tank ing bracer so I guess I'm ok =P.

I was messing around with Java PS3 Media Server while raiding(It shows how bored I was) and it is amazing. I'll post more about this later.

Tonight it's going to be 3 Drake Sartharion.

Why are we punishing ourselves you ask with very low risk/reward factor?

Well it's not certainly about loot. I guess it's more of a status symbol. For myself I just want to beat this encounter cause I'm just that competitive. I don't give a rats ass who gets the mount I just want this encounter crossed out on my things to do.

We gave up

2009-01-13T08:02:00.001-08:00

Apparently Blizz coudn't help us out with our raid ID problems.

Last night we decided to give up for the week with the 3 drakes and just kill Sartharion with 2 drakes without our 4 main raiders due to the ID issue. It was meh loot like always we sharded like 2 items.

Everyone was more excited about the dragonhide bag and loot of spoils.

So tonight were just going to knockout Naxx and Malygos and then HOPEFULLY get that long overdue Sartharion 3 drake kill.

Recording Games

2009-01-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

As our guild gets closer to getting our first Sartharion with 3 Drakes I wanna make a footage of it or even the attempts.

Hopefully I can pump some videos out by next week so some of my 5 readers can see it!

Moreover I want to start recording the games that I play on xbox360 and ps3. I'll do some research on that this week. It shoud be fun.

Has anbody have experience on this?

Raid ID problems and anime/game thoughts

2009-01-12T06:50:00.000-08:00

Well since Tuesday we only have attempted Sartharion once ...

Tuesday - too much lag so we went to naxx

Wed - our only attempt of the week so far. We managed to kill 2 drakes consistently but also kept wiping on the third drake consistently! Mix of firewalls, adds, void zones and debuffs makes this fight chaotic the first few minutes.

Thurs -We finished malygos off earlier that night but invisble/ninja raid id fucked us over at Sartharion with 3 drakes.

Fri-Sat = off, that's what I like about this guild

Sun - still having raid ID problems

and ...

Monday - we'll see tonight if our raid ID problems has been resolved.

Anime thoughts/reviews

Macross Frontier

I mentioned last week I was going to finish the last 4 remaining episodes. Overall the anime is great and the story was better than Macross Zero.

It ties up with the original macross series so the references made to them was just nostalgic.

Sadly I think the ending could have been better. Some fans say the story took a nose dive halfway thru the series. IMO it was fine. The way they ended umm... I dunno it's just me but I want some closure dammit!

*SPOILER ALERT*
It would have been nice to know who Alto(main character) picks. Rick Hunter(robotech/macross series) chosed Lisa at the end instead of Minmay. So I expected a closure like that /shrug.

I really think he's in love with Sheryl since he made that promise before that fight but the director keeps showing hints that he might also be in love with Ranka.

Well dammit pick one already!

If it was me I'd go with Sheryl, she can be stubborn sometimes but Alto can get thru her. Ranka is like Alto's little sister so that's another reason.

Anyone got comments about this anime?

Imma look for another series this week to finish.

Game thoughts/review

Left 4 Dead

Holy crap this game is so much fun. Killing zombies and fighting for survival is fun by itself but it gets amplified when your with a good team communicating/helping at each other.

I had so much fun with 3 other players who I just met. You have to trust your each other because you can't go Rambo in this game. If you can't find other players online you can have bots help you. The bots do a good job for the most part at least in normal mode but I just prefer another player.

Of course there are players who are inexperienced on shooters. I try to be patient but IF YOU KEEP DIENG CAUSE YOU CHOSE TO GO DOWNSTAIRS BY YOURSELF while the others up upstairs taking a stand against a HORDE of zombies and then later you cry cause you got killed ... geez dude.

Exteel

I got the idea on trying out this game from tobolds blog regarding Mech games. It's a 3rd person MMOFPS game. You level up and stuff =P. More to come this week but so far I like what I'm seeing plus its free.

Ninja Raid IDs and Gaming updates

2009-01-09T07:16:00.000-08:00

Well we killed 25man Malygos last night while waiting for other main raiders, nothing good drop(at least for me).

When it was time for 25man Sarth we encountered a problem regarding people zoning in different instances.

It looked like the game assigned Raid IDs to some players Wed night but it's not showing up. We are aware of the bug that you get saved to the instance if you kill a drake while doing Sartharion even if you first tagged the main boss.

After the 10th disband and reinvite we finally gave up .... arrghh! the players who kept zoning in on a different instance submitted tickets to GM and hopefully we can get some stuff done on Sunday and Monday.

Macross Frontier

Lately I have been watching the anime Macross Frontier. I'm really surprised I only saw this last week, I guess WoW can do that to you.

I'm a big fan of the original macross series(started watching when I was a kid back in 1998) so watching the first few episodes reminiscing how it went with the original series was nothing short of exciting.

I'm at episode 21 and right now things just got out of control, in a good way. The twist, love triangle and how the characters are growing are just spectacular. But with 4 episodes to go ... I'm kinda sad. I wish there were more cause I just can't get enough.

I first watch the original series because I love mech, fighter planes turning into robots is the shit. But now that I think about it, the thing that kept me watching was first and foremost the love triangle story then the dogfights followed by their colony's struggle for survival.

I'm going to watch the remaining 4 episodes tonight. Hopefully it ends it with a high note and I'm sure it will leave me longing for more. I might buy the Blu-ray collection, not sure yet though since it's already in my computer.

I highly recommend this series if your looking to find a good action/love story anime.

Left 4 Dead

I'm really excited about this game. It's about you and other 3 people/bots trying to survive and get out from the city that is infested with zombies. This game is focused on multiplayer. So it's going to be me and the wife or me and 3 other players online. There's also ala team deathmach mode where other players take the role as zombies and their goal is to eat your brains! Either way it should be fun times.

This game just shipped yesterday and I and the wife can't wait to play it. Should be here by Saturday so thats what we will be playing all weekend.

Sartharion 3 drake update

2009-01-08T06:41:00.000-08:00

Last night we finally made some progress but not enough to get the kill ...

We were stuck at killing the first drake and wiping while taking on the 2nd drake.

After a few minor adjustments in the last few hours last night we were able to kill 1st drake well before 2nd drake comes down and consistently kill the 2nd drake.

So tonight we might be looking at a kill!

As a guild we should have done this weeks ago but the lack of people showing up from the main group is keeping us down. We have more than enough gear we just need people to show up and bring their A game.

Now or never

2009-01-06T05:46:00.000-08:00

Well finally the officers decided that we won't be doing anymore Naxx until we get some really good progress on 3 Drake Sartharion.

We did the event for 2 hours but our tank keeps getting insta gib and alot of people are dieng cause of the Firewalls and Void zones, including me! Well not so much void zones but Firewalls. I guess I was just focusing so much on pumping as much dps as I can that it's too late by the time I move to avoid it.

I heard there was a way to make DBM make a sound/alert when Sarth Churns for the firewalls. I'll mess around that tonight.

I'm running out of northern spices so I'm going to just use another food buff besides my 60 AP Mammoth meal until I get about another 10+ or so.

So tonight I expect a huge repair bill, lots of food buff being consumed, lots of yelling ... well there is no yelling actually but rather a subtle I will kick you from the raid/guild if you keep doing that statements =).

WoW Rep and Console Game thoughts

2009-01-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

WoW Reputations

Well I finally hit Exalted with Sons of Hodir. I know, I should have had it a month ago but I have
been slacking and had been missing days to do my dailies.

I will still do the easy dailies though for some quick gold while I'm out there killing mammoths for my food buff.

White Polar Bear Mount

I'm still doing the daily for this mount as much as I can. Sometimes I even only log in just to do these. Only takes a couple minutes to do and who knows that bag might contain my first ever bear mount!

Oracle Dailies

I might start grinding rep for these folks to get the egg that has a chance to hatch a Green Proto Drake.

Does anyone know how many quest is available to do for these guys?

Where do I start?

What's the average time to complete all the dailies for this rep per day?

Thanks in advance if anyone replies.

Console Game Thoughts

Well I've been playing a lot of console games lately and here are some of the games that I spent a good amount of time

Metal Gear Solid 4

Gameplay:

A solid action game where you decide how you play the game either thru stealth or just rambo your thru destroying/killing everything in sight.

If you choose the stealth way you have tons of gadgest and Close quarter combat moves that you can do. Anywhere from using your OctoCamo(Camo suit that adapts with your surroundings, distracting guards by noises, choking/knocking them outor even throw a Playboy magazine at the enemy guards so you can slip past them unnoticed!

If you decide that stealth is not your game. Then this game has tons of weapons for you. There are over 60+ weapons in the game but like other sites have said they didn't sacrificed the quality for quantity.

Visual: Amazing. Easily one of the best graphics out there. Check out the videos. The flawless switch from cinematic to game is one of the praised features of the game. I was always amazed by how gorgeous this game looks, really capitalizing on the PS3 capabilities.

Sounds: A+

Replayability: If you wanna have another run at the campaign with no kills/no alerts or w/e your into then this game has tons of replay value. I myself will be working on the no kill campaign first then the no alert feat.

Pros
A well deserved ending for our legendary hero Solid Snake. This game pretty muchs sums up the Metal Gear Franchise in the past 10 years. Gameplay is just too awesome and however you play this game it will get you and the next thing you know you'll be sticking to walls and crawling under covers in real life before you know it.

They really set the bar on this one. Sometimes I blame this kind of games cause I get spoiled by them. The camera angle that fans have been crying about in the past installments has been fixed!

Boss fights are well done and like what you expect from Hideo Kojima expect some laughs here and there.

Cons
Long and I mean really long cinematics. Thankfully you can skip it the next go around.

Conclusion
I love this game! Maybe I'm biased but if everyone else in the net loves it then it might be doing something right.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Gameplay:

This game is a mix of a Tomb raider game and Gears of War =). Really can't go wrong with that. Like any platform game you figure out a way to jump/climb your way to an area add in the puzzles you have to solves and at the same time the action is just like Gears of War where you find a cover and then start shooting. There are some melee combos that you can do to get more ammo out of the enemies that you have killed.

Visuals: One of the best out there. Most action games are set on a dark setting/end of the world but here you spend most of your time in the jungle and ruins. Really nice eye candy.

Sound: Awesome! Really fit for the nature of the game.

Replay value: The only reason I will play thru this again is for the harder modes or Trophies(Xbox360 Achievements equivalent). I might give this game another go but won't be for awhile.

Pros

I was really grabbed by the story and it was though I was watching a movie as I play the game. It felt like it was Indiana Jones meet National Treasure's Ben Gates.

I finished this game on normal mode around 8-10 hours of game time which wasnt bad.

Cons
Some of the fights gets repetitive but what action game doesn't?
I wish I could have carried more guns.

Conclusion
I really enjoyed playing this game. Definetely deserves a rent or even owning it wouldnt be a bad idea if you are going for the Trophies.

I can't wait for Uncharted 2 this year!

Epics, DPS report, and Fury DPS Rotation Breakdown

2008-12-31T07:37:00.000-08:00

I promised yesterday I would post a Screenshot if I ever get a 2H weapon.

Well here it is!

Don't mind the roasted pig on the left =). After a month of waiting for a 2H to drop I finally was able to get replacement for my sub par weapons.

I got the following loots last night

Armageddon - pretty nice 2H. This is really not the ideal Main hand for fury warriors as we want Slow/Slow combo but this one was a great pick up nevertheless.

Inevitable Defeat - more of a DK tanking weapon IMO but again another big upgrade so I took it anyway.

I picked this one up from the trash to Noth a few minutes after I got Armageddon.

Crude Discolored Battlegrips - got this one from patchwerk. I will lose 4pc bonus next raid when I do wear it but I gain more stats.

Grim Troll - Beast Trinket. This one procs alot and I mean alot. My armor ignore goes up to 50%+ when this trinket procs and I like it. Plus the hit allowed me to swapped in 16hit for 16str gem.

With all these gear changes I ended up not being expertise cap for dodge. So I went thru all my gems again and I found that I'm way over hit cap for specials.

I changed another 16hit gem into a 8expertise/8hit gem. Turned out I was exactly at the cap at 4.5% + 2%(from talent) ignore dodge.

DPS Report

Well we were all pumped cause we were getting ready to get the Immortal title but something went wrong at Patchwerk that killed almost all of melee.

Some F*ing genius decided to shrink Patchwerk. By doing that he shrunk the boss' hit box which in turn made him kill all nearby melee!

After that the next 2 hours of the run would turn into a lag fest.

You know it's bad when Thaddius take's 5 sec to cast Polarity shift and then another 5 to wait for your debuff to show up. He went on to Enrage and for some miracle 2-3 people lived to finish the job. It was messy but we were glad it's over.

Me and SPQR(other TG Warrior) were trading wins in the DPS races.

Here are a couple of SS I took last night

This was from Loatheb

This one is from Kelthuzad

I was 3rd but check out my DPS. I was at 4k. My hits were all critting like crazy during the last 20 sec.

For the rest of the bosses we were pretty even. Sometimes I would pass him sometimes he would do the same. It would be interesting to see the results next week with my new gemmed and enchanted gear, my weapons(the new ones) didn't have an enchant but they were still better than the ones I was using.

Which brings up another thing, Enchants. The weapons that I have looted are not top end weapons in the game right now. So I'm not gonna put berserking on both of them.

I plan on putting the old Mongoose/+85 AP combo from my old weapons. Now I just need to look up the mats again.

I think the leadership decided to do Naxx on another day besides Tuesday to avoid another lagfest which I think is a good move.

Fury DPS Rotation

Well there is no magic here really. I should have taken SS of recount on all bosses for my personal DPS breakdown but I tend to forget after I pick up my emblem.

I do BT>WW>Slam if up>HS till BT is up>Heroic Throw when everything else is down.

I can't say I'm 100% disciplined on that rotation, which I should but sometimes I use Slam even though I'm suppose to hit WW cause my Bloodthirst crit. Then sometimes I would hit another special causing the use of BT/WW delays which results in lower DPS.

When Bloodlust is called

I pop my trinket(s) as soon as BT and WW is on CD.

I use recklessness during the duration of Bloodlust but sometimes I vary it

Sometimes I would just use it after a Bloodlust then do BT-Slam-WW combo with all of them being a guaranteed crit.

There are times though when I use Recklessness with the boss having less than 20%. I would include Execute in that combo. A guaranteed 12-14k crit is pretty awesome sometimes.

What I'm still trying to figure out is timing my executes w/o Reck. Sometimes I would get lucky on execute crits. When they do it's awesome. If not I tend to get rage starve and my dps goes lower.

I think I'll just stick to my rotation and use Executes instead of Heroic Strikes. Next week I'll be sure to take SS of breakdowns of my DPS.

Well there it is.

Another exciting night from WoW Raiding. Our next raid isn't scheduled till Sunday/Monday for Sartharion with 3 drakes up.

EDIT: I also got this achievement last night

Blog Update

2008-12-30T12:10:00.000-08:00

I have added another Gadget that shows what game's I am currently playing wether it be PC or Console games.

With WoW being too easy right now I will be dividing my game time playing WoW and console games. WoW will still be my main game, attending raids whenever we have one. I want to experience/play other games that I have passed to play in the past cause of time spent on raiding.

There's a good amount of quality console games out there that should keep me entertained till Ulduar instance comes out. I'm a big fan of shooters/action adventure and there seem to be a fair amount that I need to try out.

WoW news

Group 2 did Naxx last Sunday night and of course F*ING Armageddon dropped AND Betrayer! WOW! Seriously?! The week that I decided to do Naxx with Group 1 ...

Wish me luck on 2H tonight. If I get one ... you'll know! I'll post a big ass SS tomorrow if I do.

Also tomorrow I will be posting another Weekly DPS report. I'll try to break down fights as much as I can to help out fellow DPS warriors who has asked me about my rotations tomorrow.

Peace for now

Back from Christmas Break

2008-12-30T05:12:00.001-08:00

/wave

I logged in last night after a 5 day break from WoW. I still had my flask from last Tuesday. It worked out cause we did Sartharion with 2 drakes, no loot for me. I logged in here and there to open the gifts at Orgrimar.

Also last night I got my Gear Score finally, I got a perfect 10!

Gear Score
Is a system that we used in guild to check if you have the right gems, enchantment, and items outside 10/25man raiding optimized for PVE. Highest possible score is 10 and you need an 8 to be able to loot in raid. You also need 9.5(I think) to have your alt raid with the 2nd group.

During the 5 day break I decided to dust up my xbox360 and play some console games. Holy crap! I did miss console games!

Xbox 360
It was perfect too. Two of my buddies from the military just got back from the desert and they have been playing the new Call of Duty: World at War. I gave in and bought the game so we can play some games. This game ain't better than COD4 but I think that one just raised the bar a little bit high. It's still a good shooter nonetheless plus the campaign has a good story in it.

So if you have XboxLive and have Cod5/Gears of war 2 and you wanna party it up my tag is spybreak4u. Just add me and include a short message.

PS3
We also just bought a PS3, got Metal Gear Solid 4 in the mail 2 days after. I really love this series. If you have played at least 1 of the previous installments you will love this game. If not, then you might get bored with the excessively long cinematics.

This game is about stealth and close quarter combat but sometimes I get impatient and just treat this game like a shooter. Also this is a lot more forgiving than the previous ones. You actually have a chance now to survive if a guard has found you.

So last weekend I bought Unchartered and Resistance Fall of Man from Gamestop, taking advantage of their buy 2 get 1 free used games.

Question for PS3 users.

When you play online, do you have to change your psn name/tag everytime on a new game? I still haven't tried the online multiplayer option. I plan to get Resistance 2 pretty soon.

Is this it for WoW?

Nah, I still like doing dungeons! I still love performing in Raids and of course Questing! It just won't take up a weeks worth of gaming anymore.

I can really see myself just playing console games when not Raiding dungeons in WoW. I had a blast last week and can't wait to get my groove back in shooter games and pwn some nubs.

Tonight it's Naxx time. Hopefully we get some 2H drops and I get one, the rest of my upgrades are going to be coming from 25man Malygos.

Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective

2008-12-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

The following is copied and paste from here. Good read though.

Santa Claus: An Engineer’s Perspective

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
Different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical), this works out to 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.

This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest manmade vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.

Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 of them.

This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, even if Santa did exist, he’s dead now.

Merry Christmas.

Weekly DPS Report

2008-12-24T05:48:00.000-08:00

With new toys from last week I was really eager to see how well I do in Naxx this week. I knew it was going to be better but I didn't expect the results I got last night.

This was the Recount for the first boss, Patchwerk.

When I looked at my Recount at first I thought I was #9 but someone posted the dmg and I noticed I had mine setup for Overall. I went from 3700 dps to 4500 dps ... awesome.

Needless to say I am very pleased with the results. Don't mind the rogues up there! They will get nerfed pretty soon cause of their broken spec right now.

Grobulus and Gluth were about the same. I am always behind the rogues, ending anywhere from top 3-5.

Here is the recount for Thaddius

2nd with 8kDPS. I remember having 7kdps on this guy last week.

After this boss I was pretty much excited the whole night always. So excited that I forgot to take SS >_>. I'll post WWS if you want to check the rest of the boss out.

On Loatheb the top dps was 9k DPS, I think I was at 8k+ dps. I was placed 2nd or 3rd can't remember >_>. Not bad at all considering the buff that Fury will receive next patch.

Well while this was going on, my friend spqr(abrems) was getting pissed off why his dmg was always behind.

He actually has better gear and weapons. I'm only sporting 2 180dps 2handers(from heroic and 10man naxx) while he is using the Jawbone(2nd best in slot) and .. I forgot the name both ilvl 213 and has 200+ dps.

On Noth I passed him by 1kdps .... /shrug

We tried to figure out what was going on and the raid leader noticed the meters and wondered "why is herc consistently destroying you". So we went on to check our Stats.

After checking our stats I was only ahead by 200 AP and 1% on crit, so I guess I do have better gear except for weapons. Our dps rotation was about the same. The biggest difference was the Armor Pen Rating.

I was at 16.89% while he was at 2%. I think we found culprit! He changed some gear to get more ArP and he managed to get it up to 9% armor ignore. That helped him out abit. Now he's around 200-500dps behind which is better.

No upgrade for Herc last night >_< I was hoping for a 2H to boost my dps but no luck, I have awesome gear but my weapons makes me sad. Next week we'll see how it goes.

We cleared Naxx around 3.5 hours. Not too bad but we could have done better considering we went with 24 people with the first 2 wings.

Sartharion with 2 Drakes

2008-12-23T05:51:00.000-08:00

Done.

Well it has already been done by the guild last week. It was only last night that I was on the raid that I got the achievement.

The plan was to do Sartharion with 3 drakes however people not showing up really screwed us over. So it was decided to kill the dragon with 2 drakes for loot's sake.

If I know Steve(our GM) he will start recruiting again for holy pallies ... cause that's where we are hurting. He really doesn't resort to another Ret/Prot Paladin respeccing to holy mainly cause it's a waste of a time to him. He'd rather grab another Holy paladin who has the gear for it.

Now I'm not sure if we are doing Naxx or will keep trying on Sartharion with Drakes tonight. I want the easy loots from Naxx but finishing up the hardest encounter would be really cool especially if we are first on the server.

I guess we'll find out tonight =P. I'll keep you guys/gals updated.

Weekend update

2008-12-22T05:21:00.000-08:00

COMCAST

Well I'm sure you've read the announcement when you logged in at WoW this weekend regarding players (who uses Comcast) having issues with disconnects and ridiculous amount of latency.

I was one of the unlucky players. I was only able to log in for a few minutes then log off, good thing though that we just bought a new TV to keep me busy.

New TV!

Last Friday night I finally replaced my 20 inch tv that I bought back in 2004 when I just joined the military(I just recently separated). We figured it was about time to get a new one. Plus the Base Exchange had an extra 10% discount on already discounted tvs that night =).

We bought a Samsung 42" plasma 720p. Cost us $720 tax-free, original cost was $799.99.

I was going to go with 50" but our TV stand can only hold a max of 42 inch. 50" was only about $200 difference but that also means we have to buy a new TV stand which would cost around $150 up. That would mean an extra cost of $350+. I'll pass.

Why not 1080p? We were thinking really hard if we were going to shell out the extra cash to go 1080p. I read at Cnet and elsewhere that the difference between 720p and 1080p is not really noticeable until you have around 55+" tv/projector. Since we don't plan on getting a tv around that size we just decided to go with 720p. I'm not a min-maxer IRL. Prolly later on down the road I'm going to get a 1080p but it's prolly going for my PC to get more out of the resolution.

We later found out that Bestbuy and Circuit city has the same tv only for $699.99! I'm going to print out a copy of the ad online to get Price matching and get $20 back =). Thing is the TV has to be available at those stores near us. Best buy is out so I got circuit city left to call today. Gimme my $20!

I also got Gears of War 2 and COD: WoW (inc in the mail) for those nights that we aren't raiding, plus the wife is a shooter fan! Send me an email if you wanna play via xbxlive on some nights. Co-Op play should be fun.

Winterveil Achievements

I managed to get all but 3 of the achievements done for the winter veil achievement when my Internet is not crapping out on me.

I was on a roll last night until I hit the pre-quest for the bombing run where it requires a group of 5 people to summon this lvl 70 elite boss.

Now I have to beg/bug people to help me to get to the next stage and have a chance to complete it before time runs out.

Dragons

Last night Group 2 Naxx cleared their instance and tonight we will be doing 25man Sartharion with 3 drakes up. Officers decided we will not do another 25man Naxx till we get the kill or at least till monday next week.

I'm not sure if there is an achievement for being first on the server to defeat this encounter.

So here's hoping healers show up tonight and everyone brings their A game. I will prolly sit this one out again but I'll stay on vent just incase.

Hopefully you folks had a good weekend.

Heroes, Heroics and Arenas

2008-12-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

After finishing up my Sons of Hodir quest yesterday I decided to watch Heroes 2nd Season while AFK fishing. I stopped watching the series after Season 1 cause of WoW Raiding times. Now I only raid once a week it's time to catch up.

Heroes

I really like this show. If you have a netflix account(watch it online) or can rent the Season 1 and Season 2 I highly suggest you check it out.

The story is about how humans are evolving. People having super powers that sometimes they don't know what to do. This is not your regular super hero tv shows. This actually has some nice story background and some nice plot twist which is one of the things that makes this series awesome. The acting are above average and the scripts are just pure awesome.

I'm really bad at giving description so I suggest just googling it =).

I watched Episode 1 thru Episode 9 in 1 sitting yesterday pausing for dinner and doing some arenas ... it's that good. So check it out!

Tonight new episode of Naruto is up! You better believe it! Don't watch the english version like any anime, it's just plain awful.

Heroics

As I was watching Heroes on windowed mode I had to resize my WoW window WTB DUAL MONITOR!

I joined this heroic group to clear HoL. No wipes and I ended up being top dps with 2400 dps overall dmg. Not bad while watching tv shows right =P?

We then went to Heroic nexus to get our healer his mace. I was still watching and sometimes I would get left behind on trash pulls, go figure. No luck on the mace and the green hat! /wrist

I'm not sure if I have enough badges now to buy my hunter that Legacy bow or that haste trinket which heals you for 2% if you kill a mob that yields experience.

Arenas

For some reason this one shaman in my guild wanted to do 2s with me. We have no raid for the whole week ever since Tuesday ... so I said wth lets do it.

I specced MS and we queued up for 2v2 matches.

We lost our first 3 matchess. I blame myself really for some of them. Last time I played arena was before patch 3.0, so took awhile to get used to my keybinds again.

Fights were just way to fast to end. My shaman partner always goes down first so I didn't bother wearing any Resil gear except for the PvP trinket.

We won 3 times in a row after that. One particular fight against a Ret Pally/DK was I opened up with Sweeping Strikes + Bladestorm as they were both chasing my shaman friend. Those were good times. They both went down so fast it was funny. My crit unbuffed was at 38.5% on zerker stance. Crazy times. My AP is around 3500 plus if I remember right.

I will take advantage of my PVE gear to own some undergeared players before t hey start getting a good amount of quality gear with resil, shameless I know but that's how it goes sometimes.

Peace for now.

Naxx Achievements

2008-12-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

Last night I logged in about 10 minutes before the raid invites was suppose to go out. As I was plugging the external dvd player to my other pc when my internet just died on me with 2 minutes left till invites! WTF?! After a bunch of restarts of my modem/router and a call to Comcast I figured out that I accidentally bumped my modem turn on button O_O. I was late but they got me in the raid anyway since they havent killed a boss yet.

Anyway back to the main topic .... Achievements!

Heroic: The Safety Dance

Pretty easy and about damn time.

Heroic: Momma Said Knock You out

Our Dps was so sick that she only enraged once. Our plan was to have the tank use shield wall then after that we switch to another tank to use his on the next enrage.

Heroic: Arachnophobia

Lots of chain pulling and aoe! Once the first 2 bosses were down the ones who didnt need loot just kept pulling.

Heroic: The Hundred Club

Nobody wore any frost resistance, even Mark of the wild. The trade off of not wearing any resistance gear is he went down pretty fast that it in return for the mana usage by healers.

Heroic: Just can't get Enough

We kept pulling a group of 3 Abominations. The other adds don't come out with them so the only thing you have to worry about if you tank getting insta gib. They do alot of dmg so stun them when you can.

We were going for the Immortal Achivement but tank died at Patchwerk!

Herc gets loots

I was really hoping for 2H drops last night but no luck ... while last week when I sat out for group 2 there were 3 2hs that dropped. My luck I guess.

I got some pretty nice upgrades last night though

I upgraded my T7 helm to T7.5! I also replaced my t6 bracers(the last t6) finally. I'm still not sure if i want to buy the bracer from the Emblems of Valor Quartermaster.

After killing Malygos last night I finally completed my quest and got my uber neck till next patch anyway. I also was given the triket. Now that I don't need anymore expertise I don't need to enchant or gem for it which gives more room for STR and CRIT gems/enchants.

I also got some offspec gear for tanking. That's the best tanking shield in the game right now. The belt I really don't know didn't do any research on tanking gear from 25mans.

Hopefully next week I see more 2H drops to really up my dmg for the raid. Peace for now.

Time management and WoW

2008-12-16T05:40:00.001-08:00

If you've been around this blog at least once of twice you prolly noticed that I usually blog about endgame raiding content.

Well that's the main reason why I play WoW ... to raid. But that's not the only thing I do in WoW.

Past few days these questions came to mind when I was going thru my time management notes early this year. So I just decided to post them here anyway.

How many nights do I spend a week on raiding?

At the moment we clear 25man naxx and 25man Malygos in 1 night. We spend another night learning Sartharion with 3 drakes up, really tough fight here.

For 10mans, we also clear everything in 1 night except Malygos which can be done in like 20 minutes anyday.

So contrary to the general perception about end game raiding guilds ... we actually raid less.

When the new instances comes out, 25man Naxx will be cleared off the schedule or at least will have to wait till the end of the week as we won't be needing anymore from there. So it will prolly add 1-2 days in our sched.

Our guild doesn't/won't raid 6-7 days a week. Most of our members are adults and got family/work to attend to.

How do I handle Family matters when raiding?

I tend to warn my wife the 2-3 nights I'm raiding ahead of time. I usually do all the houses chores before raid to compensate my uselessness for the next 3-4 hours, I know I'm awesome.

The wife is pretty cool about it since she has her own hobbies online plus she also has her own WoW toons.

She refuses to level her toon by herself so yeah that's out of the question. She usually just plays the AH or go herbing. She makes a decent amount though, can't argue with that.

Best part is I don't feel alone a the house when raiding. We usually talk about work, family, games while I'm playing.

What do I do when not raiding dungeons?

When I log on I usually head right away to do Son's of Hodir rep after that I try my luck on white polar bear mount so thats another set of dailies right there. These can take around 20-30 minutes to complete.

After that if my usual 5man heroics team is on I try to run a couple with them. There's really no need for me to run heroics these days except to gear my alt or help others. Usually last an hour or an hour and a half max.

Once I get tired of heroics or my group won't do more

I log on my bank alt, collect money from the mail and post another set of items for gold. Raiding can be expensive sometimes when learning encounters =P. This takes about 10-15 minutes

I then make sure I got enough Flask/Food to cover me for the next raid. If not then I buy mats and bug a guildy to make me some flask. Another 5-10 minutes.

So all those things takes from 2 hrs - 2.5 hrs if I do heroics. I usually start right away when I get back from work around 4:30 pm.

When me and the wife are not leveling our alts together we usually watch animes/tv shows ... I know were such geeks!

These are currently the animes were watching/catching up to

Naruto - who doesn't like naruto?
Bleach - wife is really into this series atm
Gundam 00 2nd season - I like giant robots!

We just finished watching Kekaishi series. Anyone able to recommend any good anime series?

Sometimes we just watch movies in DVDs, Netflix ftw. We are not a big fan of Cable TV except financial shows or cooking shows.

We do go out from time to time to visit friends, shop, watch movies etc. We are pretty excited about snow skiing this winter. Last year was a blast.

Conclusion

When not raiding in WoW, I usually only log on for a few hours when I do raid I don't mess around and at the same time try to not isolate myself from the family. I dunno, raiding is just the main game for me, if there is nothing to raid I'll prolly quit till new leveling content is opened up. As you prolly have guessed me and the wife are on our early 20s. No child atm so we are both free to do our own hobbies.

Feel free to answer the same questions or better add more!

Group 2 Naxx run report

2008-12-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

Last week I posted how I ended up volunteering to MT our guild's 2nd 25man Naxx. This run was composed of mostly trial members, alts and a couple of Main raiders(4 of us I think).

We had 4 tanks in the raid. I thought we were gonna lack dps but we had enough heavy dpsers to compensate. One of the rogues pulled 6k DPS on patchwerk.

Cleared Spider, Plague, and Military wing with no problems. Abom wing took awhile cause of the afks ... seriously!

We had 3 wipes total.

2 on Thaddius. We had a bunch of new people so took awhile for them to realize that you really do need to run ASAP even though Raid leaders told them to for the 10th time.

1 on Kelthuzad. 1% wipe >_<. I died at 4% and it was just chaos by that time. TONS of tank gear dropped. Which went to the would be MT next week.

I did manage to get some purplz for my warrior(c whut i did der?)

Best in slot on chest for me ^_^. Now I can shell out the cash for +10 stats.

2nd Best in slot for belt. It's about 20dps upgrade from what I had. I'll take any upgrades.

Lastly I get the best DPS neck after I kill 25man Malygos this week from this quest. Quest starts from the item that you loot from Saphiron.
Hopefully I get to run with Group 1 next reset. I don't mind running with Group 2 it's just I want to finish Naxx asap and with less wipes sometimes =P. WTB 2H drops pls.

MT Priority Discussion

2008-12-15T05:52:00.000-08:00

Yakra at http://mirrorshield.blogspot.com/ describes his first hand experience how a Raid Leader/MT who has grabbed all Tank gear only to disappear on them, causing the guild's progression to hurt.

My Experience
I had the same experience, actually happened twice ... I came back from deployment around May 2006, I left when the guild was learning Razorgore and came back with BWL cleared and up to Princess Huhuran in AQ.

The guild's MT then went MIA. He's actually the 2nd one to do that. So here I am with my Tier 1 8/8 trying to tank BWL and AQ /sigh.

They promoted me to OT quickly and passed all the tanking loot to me. The substitute MT then wanted me to gear up cause he doesn't really want to tank, he wants to DPS.

I got promoted to MT, got Tier 2 8/8 and was ready to tank Twin emps in such a short amount of time. In the end we got server first on Twin emps and 2nd on Cthun.

The guild didn't give up on gearing up the MT despite the bad experience. We understood that when going for server first your tank needs to be really geared. After killing Twin Emps for the first time the loot just started to drop from there =) which means happy raiders.

My thoughts on MT Priority:

First of all Momarr(See Yakras post) made a mistake of not delegating tanking. Bad bad bad bad.

Instead of me saying MT priority is the way to go. I'll just discuss why it works for us =).

For a hardcore raiding guild who is aiming for quick progression. Gearing up your Main tank will be the first priority, always is and always have been if your goal is to be the first in server or at least one of the first ones to clear content.

Why does it work for us?

a.) 99% of the time we know the player we are giving loot to for months if not years. I've been raiding with some of these guys since 2005 pre BC.

b.) The people in the guild has a common resolve. They all agree(or at least looks like) that we want quick progression.

Clearing content faster = more gear for everyone right at the start.

c.) Being #1 guild in the server makes people not jump ship and brings in alot more competition between raiding spots. Though this is not really an issue tanking spot wise.

d.) Tier Token makes it much easier to gear up a new tank wherein back in the day you have to wait for that one specific drop /wrist.

e.) Our MT is the GM who is on all the time. And I mean literally.

f.) Cause we are Min-Maxers =). Gotta get our MT the best possible stats to help out healers. We have our fair share of 1-2% wipes because healers went OOM at about 8-10%.

Eliminating Tank dieng cause of bad gear is always good for us. Which leaves positioning, right strats, more dps left to tackle to get that first kill.

A good example is how we handled Wrath's 25 Mans.

Tank loot went to the GM/MT. He did pass on loot that are minimal upgrade to the offtank. At the same time we geared up our 3rd tank druid but all the major upgrades still goes to the MT. So in reality we didn't just gear up 1 tank, we geared up 3 in a span of 1-2 weeks with MT having priority. This was done mainly because of Patchwerk ...

After doing 2 weeks of Naxx the Tank priority loot has been lifted in our guild. MT priority will come back once Ulduar instances becomes active. Which I think nobody really mind. Hey like I said the faster we clear the next 25man the faster others get loot.

Back in BT we did gear up a new tank who joined only to go POOF on us. It really didn't hurt us because the GM or me just had to respec to tank. Of course GM was pissed =) and so did I but hey shit happens.

Like last night I MTed 25man Naxx but I passed all the tanking loot to the would be MT for Group 2 next week. Did I want the tanking loot? Hell yeah but Tanking is not my main spec .. Herc wants DPS loot! Gimme!

The tank loot that dropped was: bracers, best tanking weapon, best tanking sword, t7.5 helm, legs, bets tanking boots and I already forgot the rest.

All these went to the OT last night. So next week they won't be needing me anymore =P. I just helped out this week and showed how to do things(tank!) to the OT. I know he's more than ready next week. I did my role and next week I'll be back to dps. Those loot will drop again but again securing Group 2's naxx is more important atm.

Guilds have cleared endgame bosses w/o having the rule MT priority of course.

MT priority though when done right can save your raid some wipes and hey maybe even a week or 2 early kill on a boss. Everyone needs to be on the same page and the raid has to trust the MT.

PTR Patch 3.0.8 Notes

2008-12-11T09:49:00.000-08:00

Warrior

Bloodthirst: Charges have been decreased to 3, but the effect has been raised to 1% per charge.

Fury:
Bloodsurge: Now has a chance to trigger from any hit with Heroic Strike, Bloodthirst, or Whirlwind.
Titan's Grip: The hit chance penalty has been removed.

All I can say is FINALLY ...

Blizz finally listened to us warriors who were asking to buff Bloodsurge. Proccing only on a BT crit is not worth 3 talent points especially if ends up only 3-4% of my damage.

I believe Titan's Grip penalty has been removed mainly for

1.) Warriors who are just leveling and want's to spec TG and actually make it work. quest rewards/crafted doesn't really have enough hit to make them cap =P.

2.) It's also for warriors who just dinged 80 and wanna make their way into the Raiding scene. Now they won't have to worry about gemming for Hit all the way =) or grabbing some add trinket/gear just to compensate for the hit.

Of course it benefits the TG raiding warriors already like me ^_^. Less hit gems more STR!

It's all on PTR so I'm keeping my gems till it actually goes live. Nonetheless it's good news.

The Undying ...

2008-12-11T05:45:00.000-08:00

Last night we did our respective 10 man groups. The guild leadership makes group for 10mans sometimes up to 4 groups. They do a good job on spreading geared/skilled players throughout the groups. I wanna talk about how our guild handles 10mans but that will be on a different post.

I was the assigned co-leader of the group. My group is going the Undying Title. Where no one has to die during ALL boss encounters. If we do that we get an achievement and an awesome title with it like Herc, The Undying. There is a similar achievement for 25man it's called the Immortal.

Our group make up was

Tanks - 2 warriors
Healers- priest, shaman, pally
DPS - elemental shaman, hunter, 2 mages, 1 rogue.

I decided we do Abomination then DK wing first. So if we fuck up .. we fuck up early.

Patchwerk - too easy
Grobulus - is this even a boss? granted he's tougher now than his 40man version.
Gluth - he only managed to do 1 decimate.

Thaddius ... ok everything was going well until our Resto shaman bite the dust! You can imagine the yelling in vent when he died, not angry just getting upset I find it pretty funny tbh.

Priest: Don't even try to pull a Fast DC there!
Hunter: How do you even die to this boss?! I thought it was impossible.
Warrior: You suck!
Mages: I hate you!

Sure enough it appeared the shaman went offline and when he logged back in he said

"Did someone die?"

Funny thing was he didn't DC in vent =P. He was getting shit from us all night. Whenever he tried to talk someone says Shut up Scrub!

Now ... what if we didn't have any other deaths for the rest of the night?

We cleared spider wing, DK, and Plague no problem.

Ninja Afkers

The biggest thing was wiping on trash in between bosses. Not on bosses but on trash. People like to go afk w/o telling me ... or at least in raid chat. Which resulted in wipings on trash pulls >_>. I guess I should have ready check but nobody mentioned they were going AFK.

I have no problems with breaks ... just tell me! geez

Sapphiron and Kelthuzad

We wiped on Saphiron once, I guess the healer wasn't used to the dmg being taken by the raid.

Kelthuzad was one shot but .. he dropped the Fist weapon ... again .. for the third fucking time! No axe for Hercy.

Tonight we are going for 10man Malygos then Sartharion with 1-2 Drakes up cause were hardcore like that.

Maybe next week we'll get closer to that Undying Achievement.

Taking one for the team or am I?

2008-12-10T05:41:00.000-08:00

With our guild having 50+ members online at a given night with the cap of 25man raids ... something has got to give.

Last night the leadership announced that they will be having a 2nd 25man Naxx group. The ultimate goal is to take advantage of the trivial content, run two separate raid groups with main raiders spread out so we get twice the chance of loots to gear up faster.

Group 2 will not be as stacked as Group 1 of course. That's why some people were upset. First because they didn't make it into Group1, second they are afraid group 2 will be an altfest resulting into a wipefest. Group 2 will consist of some main raiders, trial members(which we have a ton) and main raider alts who are geared(t6+).

I got an invite for Group1(like always =P). The CoGM pmed me if I don't mind tanking for G2 this week as they need a geared and experienced tank to make the second 25man run smoother. I told him I don't mind tanking till next week because I need Emblems of Valor for my dps gear.

He then went on that all 2H will be passed to me since I'm the only main raider/main spec there who can use 2H and maybe also get some dps gear/tanking gear. With that in mind I went hmmm... that's not a bad deal at all. I agreed, I left the zone and the raid group.

Did I just get played or what? I did it to help out Group 2 make the run smoother but ... I also did it with my own agenda in mind. That is to get decent upgrades for my character. I've tanked 10man naxx(also the 40man) but havent done it on 25s. I guess I better enchant my stuff now huh?

Now Abrems, the other DPS/tank warrior heard this and he then volunteered to tank it also with me and him switching from G1 to G2 each week. Hopefully as we gear up trial members can tank it.

The CoGM announced in vent that me and abrems will be tanking G2 alternately. Were both decent tanks and I hope that's enough comfort to other raiders that it won't be a FailBoat.

Hopefully the rest of the members don't rush and do their own 25mans ... leaving me and the others screwed.

I usually have bad experience when I'm going out of my comfort zone to help people but we'll see.

Honestly if the 2nd 25man naxx doesn't start cause we lack people this week I don't mind really well I guess I won't be too bummed about it heh ... gear is so easy to get with such trivial content.

I mainly want to be in the raids where we are going for our first kill a.k.a progression fights. I have enough gear to be competitive on Group 1 for DPS. I'm a raider since vanilla wow and I still savor those moments when we get server first kills.

Wish Group 2 good luck!

What does your Raid Schedule look like?

2008-12-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

For our guild it looks like this

Tuesday - Clear 25man naxx and 25man malygos.

Wednesday - Work on Sartharion with 3 drakes up.(Toughest encounter atm)

Thursday - Raid DPS test followed by 10man Naxx and 10man malygos

Friday - nothing

Saturday - nothing

Sunday - finish up remaining 10mans.(should be done by thursday)

Monday - nothing

So that's 3 nights a week of raiding if we don't wipe like crazy ... again. Then it's back to my druid alt or DK alt if the wife wants to level her shaman.

How is your raiding schedule looking like?

Don't turn down a DPS Warrior

2008-12-09T07:36:00.000-08:00

It's ok to turn down a poorly geared DPS warrior from time to time but to turn down all dps warriors just because of their class/spec is just rather insulting.

I should have taken SS but I guess you'll have to take my word for it or ask my guildies who I do 5mans with =P.

Last night was the only 2nd time I respec to DPS a heroic. We did a bunch but here's the 2 heroics that I think shows how TG warriors "don't suck" at 5mans.

Heroic Caverns of Time

A guildy was asking for DPS for H CoT. I volunteered. At first he was reluctant but I told him that Fury DPS warriors own.

Ok, the thing was I haven't DPS H CoT as Fury ... only as MS which I did ok. Now I'm thinking "Oh crap now i gotta deliver! hopefully I don't suck".

I was averaging 4000-4400 DPS on bosses.

On the 2nd boss somehow I managed to pull 4890 dps ... The extra adds with low health helped me kept Victory Rush up. Was that cheating? Hell no, it's part of the game mechanics just like mage/lock AOE.

And of course we got the Bronze drake for our drood tank.

Heroic Violet Hold

We 4manned this instance because our rogue didn't get in time when the door closed. I was averaging 4400-4600 dps on bosses. Not bad at all.

Tonight is 25man Naxx and I'm really excited how will I do on Patchwerk, Thaddius and Loatheb. Last week I pulled 3600 DPS on patchwerk as MS warrior.

So before you say "lol what? No we don't need a dps warrior" or something to that effect think again.

Bind on Account Items FAQ

2008-12-08T07:27:00.000-08:00

What do you do when you got all the upgrades you can get from the Emblem Gear Vendor?

Buy Legacy Items(Bind on account items)!

Ever since I hit 80 I've tank enough heroics to get emblems for my DPS gear (lolwut?). I've been lucky enough to get tank gear from Naxx so no need to spend emblems there.

So far I've bought DPS trinket(40 emblems), DPS Chest(80 emblems). DPS gloves(60?), DPS necklace(25) and the latest one was the Legacy DPS leather shoulder(40) for my feral druid.

All my next purchase will be these Legacy items.

How much do Bind on account items cost?

2H Weapons(2H axe, staff and bow) cost 65 Emblems of Heroism

Armors, trinket and 1H weapons cost 40 Emblems of heroism.

PLEASE SEE EDIT

Is there enough variety to choose from?

There are no class specifics but there is enough to get at least 1-2 items per class. Example would be there is no Feral druid staff ... but the DPS leather shoulders I bought are good enough =). Next would be the trinket.

And then when I log on a different alt I can just send the item to another alt that would use them.

How good are these items?

Well these items scale according to the character's level, so when you level up they also level up! I've compared the shoulders to the rewards from my quest and they just totally blow them away. When I head to Northrend I will do some screenshots comparing my shoulders to green and blue items.

The armor items has a bonus of 10% extra experience gained from kiling monsters

This is a total winner right here.

How do I send them?

Easy enough. Just mail them!

Can you Enchant them?

No you cannot.

Is there any other way to get Legacy items?

Yes there is. You can purchase other legacy items by spending Stonekeepers Shard. You can only get stonekeepers shard from heroics IF your faction controls Wintergrasp.

If you plan to go this route. The vendor is at Wintergrasp, same vendor as the black mammoth mount.

I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard added more Bind on Account items. I can imagine myself buying all of them soon ^_^. Leveling alts would have never been easier =P.

If you have any more question regarding this subject please feel free to comment or send me an e-mail.

EDIT: I just checked last night and trinkets and armor don't have the same requirements. Please check the vendor again before making any plans.

Raid DPS Test

2008-12-05T05:42:00.000-08:00

Last night was a scheduled Raid DPS Test night. We would all meet at Main cities, raid buffed, flasked, etc at the Boss Dummies to test our DPS.

The CoGM wanted to do this test for the following reasons:

1.) How the classes do against each other.
2.) How each player is doing in respect to the other people of the same class.
3.) Who knows how to DPS and who just bashes their head on their keyboard (ie. uses a good cycle)
4.) Who to take on certain fights where DPS is a must.

I realize "normal" guilds don't necessarily do this but read on if you want to know more about the results of the test. Ok lets move on.

Hopefully this helps raiding folks who are reading this blog where they should be DPS wise.

My Spec

I specced Titans grip last night. I put points into Bloodsurge even though I'm not a big fan of it.

I went down to Arms to get Deep wounds. Don't bother looking at Armory .. I specced prot right after the tests to tank 10man Naxx.

The only glyph I saw that benefits fury was the Heroic strike Glyph.

IMPORTANT: The miss rate was lowered by Blizzard. Instead of needing 9% chance to hit you now only need 8% to be capped on yellow attacks.

This change made the switch from Arms-> Fury(TG) a little easier.

The "Pre-test"

We started at Undercity. Our first DPS test lasted for 6 minutes. We used Bloodlust at the 2min mark.

The problem that we ran into was the Raid boss dummy went down fast. This caused

1.) Mages, hunters, and warriors have finishing moves to use when the target is below a certain %.
2.) Certain class abilities like Ret pallies and DK gets their damage nerfed due to the mob's HP at zero.

So they cut down the test down to 3-4 minutes.

NOTE: I didn't even spam execute. I find that I get rage starve when I spam it. Instead I try to use it whenever I just used Bloodthirst and Whirlwind so it's enough time to get rage for another Bloodthirst.

So after a couple of pre-test we went on to TB for the "real" test. Hopefully by this time classes are already familiar with their rotations and what spec to use.

DPS TESTS RESULTS

Hunter's and Mages just raped everybody on the meters ... heck even hunter's pet do more damage than some of our Rogues ....

Regarding the Dummies armor, yes the dummy has armor we tested it with and without sunder armor and we noticed a significant increase in DPS not as much as the real bosses but enough to make a difference.

Good thing there were trial runs as that was the first night I specced TG boss wise. I had enough time to get used to the rage generation and when to use my abilities.

Of course me being top 1 or 2 melee made me feel pretty good and relieved. The first run where I did 4330ish DPS my crit was just going all over the place it was crazy. The other DPS warrior Abrems was Arms during the pre-test but switched to FUry. He is not hit capped and his weapon is not as good as mine. Next week we will do another run.

The Raid leaders were concerned about Rogue's DPS they are kinda low. They were mostly concerned about players with the same class but a huge gap on DPS.

I think everyone had an idea where they stand now DPS wise, max dps spec, proper rotations, what mistakes to avoid and hopefully everyone had a good competitive fun while doing it. All in all the tests lasted for an hour and a half.

All these are posted at WWS but I think it just took overall. Check out our guildsite http://renascenteredar.com/ and follow the link for WWS if you are interested.

EDIT:

My thoughts on TG spec. It is definetely the better dps spec for pve. The argument now is the 2% increase in physical dmg in Arms, if its worth to have 2 Warriors using Titans grip or the other one using Arms for utility.

This generally depends on the raid makeup and the difference in DPS the TG and arms is doing. I will post more about this later.

Toughest 25man Content Atm

2008-12-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

People have been complaining raids being too easy. There's two kinds of players who say that

a.) The ones who have cleared content
b.) The ones who keep hearing about players who have cleared content

I don't have a probelm with a.) but the one's at b.) sometimes I wonder ... they claim content is too easy and even sometimes wants the content to get harder but they havent even beaten it ...

My advice is experience the content first =P before going with what the crowd is saying. Of course we all know Naxx is easier compared Kara but hey it still requires attention. Remember the guilds that have cleared(or at least got far) the original naxx were the ones who generally finished 25man when it was released.

ok back to the main Topic

The Toughest 25man Content atm is

Sartharion with 3 Drakes up. PERIOD.

Quick recap about the fight: The instance has the boss, Sartharion, and 3 mini bosses. If you kill all 3 mini bosses before Sartharion the fight is really really easy, you just have to dodge waves like Felmyst and kill adds.

The real challenge starts when you decide to leave a drake up before engaging Sartharion. It is a whole different ball game much more with 2 or all of the drakes up =). Of course the more drakes up the better the quality of the loot.

Even our guild who has killed Malygos twice is having a hard time beating this event. We gave up after 2 hours and just killed 2 drakes before the boss and killed him.

One word can only be said about this encounter ... CHAOS. There are tons of things going on all a the same time I mean literally even our hardcore raider gets challenged. It's different from what were used to in Naxx where we come in and one shot everything.

In terms of beating content yes we killed all what Wrath has to offer but we havent beaten ALL of the encounters =). This remains a challenge for us and we look forward in attempting it again next week.

25mans Cleared

2008-12-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

Well almost all of them =P. We cleared all 25mans last night from Wintergrasp boss, Naxx to Malygos. Only thing left is the 25man Obsidian sanctum.

Of course my spec was DPS.

I speced PVE arms last night and I must say that I did better this time around. I'll highlight some Bosses

Patchwerk: I pulled 3660 DPS. Not bad at all I ended up 6th Overall.
Thaddius: I placed 3rd overall. My max Execute crit was 27k damage!

If you are interested on DPS rotations, talent selection, gear selections here is our Site http://renascenteredar.com/

Click the link for WoWwebstats.

Hopefully it helps other who are still trying to figure out their rotations etc. I got about 3 upgrades from Naxx last night. A new cloak, legs, and t7.5 shoulders ^^.

Titan's Grip

Ok me and my friend abrems are fooling around with this spec. We concluded that it's not worth till we get a good decent amount of hit. We don't have to be hit cap but just enough to make the spec bearable. Of course having another leet 2H would help =P.

Going Back in time - Epic Tiered Items

2008-12-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

In the past 4 years Blizzard have made some changes on the way they give out the coveted Tier Epic items for each class. In my experience nothing is more than satisfying than wearing your class specific Tier pieces, using it on progression fights and rocking it out outside AH at Org =).

Let's go back in time and observe how the giving out of Tier Epic items evolved.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 (Molten Core/Blackwing Lair)

Two items that are class specific drops from a Boss. This was an ok system.

The Good

You know who the items go to(duh!) so the argument that this item is better for class x than class y is non-existent.

The Bad

i. There were 7 classes to each faction back then. So you had a 1/7 for your item to drop and if it did you had to win it by dkp or by roll w/e.

ii. Completing your set can take a long amount of time. For some people it took months almost to a year to complete that set waiting for just that one drop. I'm sure any old school raider can relate to this.

iii. By the time the "seasoned" players finish their set they don't want to run that dungeon anymore because they got so sick of it. This puts the new people at a disadvantage and now have to find a replacement. Sad thing is the cycle will continue.

Tier 2.5 and Tier 3 (AQ/Naxxramas)

This is where Blizzard moved to Token drops. Now you can get your Tiered Epic Items thru Tokens which is shared by 3-4 classes.

The Good

i. Instead of having 1/7 chance for you item to drop now it's a minimum of 33% chance add to the fact that there are 2 token drops.

ii. The token be used by alot more players which means getting upgrades rather than leaving the an item to rot because there was no Warlock in the raid.

The Bad

i. You still have to compete for the item but it's only against 3 classes not 7.

Tier 4,5 and 6

They pretty much stick to the token system.

The introduction of Badge Justice.

Badge of Justice can be acquired when killing a boss in heroic mode or a boss in Karazhan. You can purchase t5-t6ish quality gear with your hard earned badges.

This is one of great ideas that Blizzard has put into the game. This is what drove people to do the
daily heroics, the kara runs and more heroics.

The Good

i. You can get decent upgrades for your character w/o even stepping into a 25man raid dungeon.

ii. You don't have to wait for that one special tier item from raids for a nice upgrade.

iii. People still ran Kara/heroics even though they outgear the place. This helps alts or the characters who are needing some gear from there.

iv. Epic gems! For you own use or for profit don't matter.

The Bad

i. I just wish there were set bonus from badge gear. But hey we can't have them all right?

Now lets see what we currently have.....

Tier 7 and 7.5

The Return of the Badge System(but better)

What's new?

A.) Emblems now drops off bosses in 10mans(Emblems of heroism) and 25mans(Emblems of Valor) instead of just dropping in 5man Heroics.

B.) With Emblems of Heroism. You can now buy t7 tokens! Whoa?! You can purchase the t7 Chest(80 emblems) and t7 gloves token(t7 gloves).

For Emblems of Valor you can buy t7.5 tokens. You can purchase the t7.5 shoulder or legs.

The Good

i. More sources of emblems. For those that only has time to do 10mans/25mans this is a pretty good deal.

I currently have spent 205 emblems of heroism and 25 emblems of valor. I'm gonna pimp my alts pretty soon with the bind on account items.

ii. No more need to wait on that token to drop!

iii. You can get 4 pieced of tiered epic items w/o setting foot in naxx. Progression for your character will be alot faster than the previous expansion and back in Vanilla wow.

The Bad

i. In terms of item availability none. If terms of item rarity well you'll see tons of people wearing the same gear as you so it's not as epic anymore =P. I won't feel bad because I also look at my gear as a key to conquering the next raid instance.

ii. My only fear is people will tear thru this content like nothing. But then again not everyone plays like I do so I think were good. It will only a matter of time before blizz adds another set of badge rewards.

What do you think of the new system? Of course it's good for character progression, but do you think theyre giving away powerful items that fast?

25man loot is still superior but I'm happy that my alt doesn't need to raid like my main to enjoy some purple goodness.

Weekend Blitz

2008-12-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

First off.

Malygos 25man is down =). Got her Saturday night. I wasn't in the raid when they did it >_<> US: 144 Realm: 1. So I guess that's it for now eh?

I can see ourselves clearing all the 25man content in 1 or 2 nights then for the rest of the weeks ... I dunno prolly 10mans or leveling alts/proffesions. Blizz has really gone casual with this released content. Again not a bad thing cause I know I can't keep up forever spending hours raiding like I did TBC for BT/Sunwell, school starts soon for me.

Second.

I did get all the remaining 80 emblems like I planned on. I got it Saturday afternoon. By 6pm last night I got another set of 44 emblems. I bought the DPS neck. So my DPS gear is starting to look decent. Now I think I'll buy some tank gear =P with all this tanking in 5mans.

Third

Herc has 4 new toys.

Bronze Drake

We have a group for a Strat run every night. This is our 2nd one so far and I got lucky with the rolls. The group is pretty strong and I won't stop tanking for this group until everyone has one. I have no SS >_>

Black War Mammoth

Ok ... this thing ... is HUGE!

Red Sword of Courage
After having run Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle over and over this baby finally dropped.

The other day, all of our DPS died when the 3rd boss was at 95%. Me and Renyeturn(resto shaman) duoed the boss till he died. It took about 10-12 minutes but hey we got him down =P.

L33t 2H Axe(Forgot the name!)
Pretty nice axe. Got it on my 2nd Heroic Halls of Lightning run. Another big upgrade for my DPS gear.

Bind on Account items.

I mentioned earlier I was going to spend emblems for tanking gear. Well there is only 1 item from Heroism emblems that would be a major upgrade for me, the trinket. After that I'm going to buy Bind on Account items and send it to my alts ^_^. 2H for the Pally, mh for the lock and bow for the hunter.

My next post will be about how Blizz has changed the distribution of Tiered Epic Gear.

More purplz?

2008-11-28T10:45:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-26T10:37:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-26T07:28:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-25T07:07:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-24T05:40:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-21T05:54:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-20T06:24:00.001-08:00

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!

2008-11-19T11:32:00.001-08:00

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

2008-11-19T06:08:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-18T05:29:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-11-14T05:37:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-11-13T11:12:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-13T09:24:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-12T05:42:00.001-08:00

3 nights left and I'm still not ready

2008-11-10T12:06:00.000-08:00

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?

2008-11-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

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"

2008-11-06T05:34:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2008-11-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

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

2008-11-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2008-11-03T09:45:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2008-11-01T17:25:00.001-07:00

Help! Prepartions for Wrath ... what to do.

2008-10-30T05:37:00.000-07:00

Well Sunwell and BT is cleared and it looks like I got time to do some other important endeavors. There's so much needed to be done! First problem

ALT MADNESS

I have been using the Recruit-A-Friend program. In the process I made these toons on my account.

Lvl 60 Druid, 60 Warlock, lvl 23 soon to be Lvl 60 Pally and lvl 7 soon to be Lvl 60 Priest via granting levels.

On my wife's account she has lvl 60 Shaman, lvl 60 Rogue, lvl 60 Druid, lvl 23 Mage, and a lvl 7 Warlock

IF I want to right now I can ding my pally and priest to 60 in a blink of an eye but I think I'm clinging to the idea that I might pull off another 60 mage in there ... am I greedy or what?

My original plan was to ding both pally/mage to 30 then the priest/warlock to 30. Then I'll use the levels from the mage and warlock to level my mage from lvl 1 to lvl 30 then give the rest of the 30 levels from one of the other 60s .... so in the end I get 5 lvl 60s and my wife gets 3 lvl 60 and 2 lvl 30s. I need to decide what I want to do because RAF ends at Nov 11.

Frankly I dunno if I can do it, but thinking about those wasted levels to be granted aarrghhh .... at the same time, there are other stuff I need to do like

Work on Achievements

Quest achievements - this is a big one, I'm into quest and the lore. I only need a couple quest on some zones in Outlands to get the loremaster Achievement but I can't find anymore quest ... yet

Heroic 5mans achievement - I haven't done some of the dungeons and I didn't even get credits for the ones I did. Badges ain't bad either.

Reputations - I still need Shatar, Lower city, Caverns of time and Cenarion Exalted Rep(Wow Herc isn't that everything? lawl). I'm almost exalted with Cenarion so I'll get that one first cause I get the title and get the 15 exalted achievement at the same time.

PVP achievements - my guild has been grabbing some hard ones last weekend like AV perfection, AV blitz w/e. I want to do some before the gear reset.

Level up Cooking/Fishing

Right now its stuck at 166 for both since november 2006. I want to level this up to be self sufficient and make some money at the same time.

Clean up my bag, bank, bank alts

WTB 20slot bags in xpac. I gotta do some cleaning. I want my bags to have as many slots as possible when I start questing in Northrend.

Liquiditate liquidate liquidate

This is really tough with the rest of the server doing the same thing. I'll just hang onto the materials that will be needed for powerleveling a profession (bars, herbs, gems, leather and enchant mats) and dump the ones which prolly won't be any use to lvl 80 like marks of illidar, signets and stuff.

Level Druid to 70 and max his proffesions

I decided he will be my alt and take up enchanting and mining(my poor alchemy/herb hunter who's lvl 61 /cry). I'm not sure if I can max his proffesions. I just want him to get to 70 seeing that guilds still need healers and I decided to put the sword down and put on the robe ... lolwhut? I know that was horrible.

Conclusion

Holy crap that's alot of stuff to do. I need to prioritize which ones I want, see if my expectations are realistic, sort out time/reward effort and then do it. My guild won't be doing any mandatory raids a week before Wrath hits to get our raiders some time to take care of stuff or maybe just take a break.

Next week I'll post what I got done and have failed to hold myself accountable.

Are you ready for Wrath? What have you done to prepare your toons? alts?

Raid Update, Builds Test, Dps Pewpewpew

2008-10-29T07:58:00.000-07:00

Hi! How was your Raid last night? I hope it went well and everybody progressed.

Last night we started sunwell around 8. Our GM was really really really pissy last night cause KJ rotted last week. He told us 3 strikes and were out of the raid if its a big one you are out of the Guild, whoaa ...

My build last night was 15/46/0. I got rampage with 3/3 Intensify rage with zero points in Bloodsurge cause it sucks ... really really bad and maybe made up 3% of my total dmg. I also specced Rampage even though we had a feral druid in the raid.

My thoughts on this spec:

My dmg output is higher but I wanna do more test because I'm arrogant like that. Typically I can use death wish and sometimes recklessness twice which is always good. I try to time the 2nd Deathwish when they are about to call Bloodlust.

My ability rotations are

Heroic Strike(HS) spam while using BT and whirlwind when they are available. That's it =). It is ALOT easier than my old rotation but I'm putting out more dmg ... weird huh? I'm sorry fellow dps warriors for calling us out like that >_<.

Of course its the little details that separates a good warrior from a bad one. You can use recklessness + execute combo but remember they changed reck to crits to your 3 next yellow attacks. Something to think about. BT or execute be sure not to waste it.

On the last 20%, I made Execute my priority which at the end of the fight made up around 8-11% of my total dmg. Not bad when I only used it that late in the fight. Highly suggest you should only be hitting BT, execute and sometimes HS during the last 20%. Whirlwind will eat your rage if you use it.

Ok moving on. This is how our Sunwell raid went

Kalecgos - 1 shot him. I got my 2nd t6 bracer tokens. YAY for tanking!

Brutallus - 1 shot and here is why I smiled at the end =). 3211 DPS PZ. First for me in Brutallus.

Felmyst - We wiped like 3 times ... I know lol. Our GM read the breath wrong I think so we wiped on those. Last wiped same thing happen but this time people were slow to move he let it go cause he owes us 2 strikes =P.

Twins - One shot. Herc has a new purplz weapon! Best offhand in the game(for 2 weeks lolol) for me other than the offhand Warglaive.

My only gripe is this is the 3rd weapon I enchanted Mongoose in 2 weeks! Greater Planar essence is not cheap in my server >_<. I've made alot of money selling enchant mats in the past week since people has been getting new gear but I shorted myself some Greater Planar Essence /sigh.

Muru - 2 Shot heh was easy enough.

We took a 20 min break to get our new shiny stuff some enchants and another 15-20 explaining some new strats not fun but I had to pay attention.

Kil'Jaeden - One shot. After wiping on him for a week after the first kill ... I guess everybody brought their A game in fear of getting replaced.

Lastly I broke another one of my record during KJ. New Max Deep Wounds Record

4910 Deep Wounds(DW) Tick, yummy. One thing though is my average deep wound tick is kinda low which I guess is ok for now since DW was 30% of my total dmg. I didn't break 2500 though like I did the other night, I think it's because sunders was not up all the time as tanks were busy controlling the adds.

This will prolly my last post about Sunwell Raid unless for some miracle I break 3500 dps on Brut or KJ, my max deep wounds break 6-7k Mark, I get pauldrons of berserking or fel legplates =).

We only have BT left and that will only last less than 2 hours after that I got other stuff to do and it's only Wed. So expect some Achievement, Alts or thoughts about raiding in the next few days.

Happy Raiding tonight!

What?! You want to be a Raider? Ok!

2008-10-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

With the upcoming expansion and Blizzard's promise to make entry raiding more accessible we can expect an influx of new raiders.

So if you decided or just deciding whether to participate in dungeon crawling with you and your friends (or newly found friends) first ask yourself these questions …

1. How much time do you want to spend raiding?

Raiding is a time sink. There I said it. No sugarcoating here sorry. You gotta spend a good amount of time raiding to get the benefits whether 2-3 hours a week or 2-3 hours a day. Remember though time=/=skill.

2. What do you hope to get at the end of the day?

Purplz? Raiding experience? See content you haven’t seen? Is it for the challenge of successfully beating a scripted boss/event with 9(24) other players? Is it for the challenge? A sense of accomplishment? Moar purplz?!

W/e it is … remember it! Don’t lose sight of it. At the end of the day if you had fun and got what you hoped for then the hours you spent was not wasted.

For me I enjoy the challenge and the sense of accomplishment =). Of course I want more purplz I'm not gonna lie but they come and go. It's the memories in those items that will always be attached with them. I still have my old T1,t2, andT3 set in the bank just to remind me that those moments were real whether it be for the challenge itself or the memories with friends.

3. What kind of raiding guild do you want to join?

There are TONS of guilds out there are. Find one that suits your play style. Do your homework. There is no easy way to categorize them. You can do them by

a.) What content they are doing
b.) How many hours they spend a week raiding
c.) The rules on how flexible they are on attendance/skills
d.) Size of the guild

Check out the list I mentioned and see if their schedule will work for you and if they have an open spot. For a priest guide applying to a raiding guild or an overall general tip read Snarkcrafts post here.

There is no perfect guild. Even if you get into one … then it’s not perfect anymore =P.

4. What can you bring to the table?

No free lunch here =) you gotta give something in return either by attendance or your leet skillz. Can you get away from virtual fires? ok good! I hope you do that too in real life, I really do.

Ok Herc I'm ready! ORLY? Well read more and I'll give you a stack of netherweave bandage.

Herc's tips on starting Raiders
1.) Know your class - Head to your class forums, visit elitist jerks forums, or browse other blogs that talks about your class.

If your confident on the things you say about your class, people will believe you even though sometimes your wrong. Well don't go around telling stupid shit here but you know what I mean.

2.) Have a source of gold to tap into - Raiding is not cheap. Do you have a gathering profession or do you play the AH?

Nothing worse wiping on a raid only to find out you can't repair cause your broke. Another example would be going into a raid with half ass consumables while the other 24 people got their stuff together ... how can you even look at yourself?! Do some dailies or sell some netherweave bandage(6g a stack)!

3.) Turn with your mouse and keybind all important abilities/spells. It's really annoying when you first try it but just tell yourself you will need this in the long run. Especially with Naxx ... some bosses that comes to mind are

Heingan - This boss/event will show people who is either a.) lagilicious or b.) bad player c.) a & b. He is also knows as the Pro sauce for noobs hahaha <3. You can't afford to keyboard turn on this one.

Thaddius - everyone will get a + or - debuff charges. If you are withing 5-10yrds with someone who has the opposite charge you both die and people around you die. You get the idea =P. People were losing DKP left and right when we were doing Naxx back then.

Wrath is the perfect time for all raiders =) with the gear reset and all. I welcome you to the world of Raiding if you decide to take on it. Hope you find a guild that suits your play style. Happy raiding!

Next post will be Thoughts about being a Raider. Stay tuned! Feel free comment.

Herc Tanks Heroic Dungeons

2008-10-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

Me and Heroics <_>

It's been months since I ran heroics. So me and my hunter friend decided to finish up Coilfang Heroic Dungeons. I started off with

LF Tank, Healer, DPS Heroics!

Surely enough we got the group. I was at the summoning stone and after 10 min ... I was still the only one at the Stone. WTF? It appears they are having fun zombieng it out. I told the rest of the guys if theyre are not here in 5 min we will look for another group. Surely enough I kicked 2 and the other dced.

So I spam again LF tanks and healers. Apparently we still couldnt find tanks so I decided hey I'll tank how bad could it be? We got a Resto Druid, rogue, and an spriest whos an alt of a friend. Now as we stroll to Zang this spriest pmed me.

Spriest: Hey herc, you tank spec now or what?

Me: LOL Hell no! I'll DPS tank this bitches

Spriest: You will get raped, it's still a heroic

Me: If it gets rough, I'll put on some tank gear. I'm 4/8 BT geared tank and I'm overgeard for this. I got this shit!

Spriest: You will still get crit to the face like a mofo

And here is where I think he was right =P

So we started with Slave Pens. I was thinking I was just going to wear my DPS gear and lol Blood thirst my way.

First pull ..... I saw my health drop below 50%. HOLY CRAP these guys hit hard while I'm on zerker stance /bonk. Oh boy. What seemed to be a cake in the walk in my head earlier looks like were headed thru the valley of death.

I started switching out some tank gear and eventually switching to my full Tank gear.

Here were the other things that was happening as we make our way to the bosses

1. Because I planned on battle/zerker stance my bars for defensive stance was messed up. So as the hunter kept pulling I was rearranging my bars. hah!

2. I remembered Shield Slam was trainable. So put that in there. I'm missing something ... oh yeah taunt. Where the hell is my sunder button?

3. I'm using Brutalizer which I just received weeks ago but forgot my axe skill was 300. OOOPS! Now is not a good time to level that shit!

Eventually like riding a bike it all came back to me. Tanking was the reason why I started raiding pre-bc and the same reason why I got accepted into my current raiding guild when I came back in the game. Due to the amount of tanks we had I switched to DPS because I wanted to raid and now I'm all into PEWPEW and all but tanking reminds me of the days.

Anyway by the time 2nd boss is down I got the hang of it and we finished it with 1 wipe after the rogue dced.

Lesson of the day?
Yes me and the hunter was overgeared for heroics but I missed one key detail ... that the others were not or maybe that was me being arrogant that we can "carry" them. I quickly learned my lesson.

Group disbanded but we managed to find another group to finish Heroic Underbog. Got it done then went on 4manning Heroic SteamVaults(5th guy went afk after the first pull ..wtf?)

Shout out to the healer in my group doing H SP. Sorry for putting you in a unnecessary stress there. But was that fun or what? =P

Coilfang Heroics = Check
CE Rep = 9k to go >_<

Need ... More ... Brains ...

2008-10-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! How was your weekend? Mine composed of something like this .....

and this ...

and then some more

I could post more pictures but you get the idea and I'm sure you got better SS.

Personal DPS breakthroughs ... what's next

2008-10-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

Ok so last time I mentioned I was going to try 15/46/0 Fury with Deep wounds. I didn't get a chance to try it last night because we had a feral druid so I thought I can get away with my 15/38/8 Fury with Deepwounds and Incite spec.

To recap my spec is 15/38/8. 3/3 Deep Wounds on Arms, 3/5 on Imp Berserk and I didn't get Rampage. 8 points in Prot to get Incite +15% crit on HS, Tclap, and Cleave. I have a mix of BT/S4 and 2 tokens from Sunwell. Dual wielding Warglaive for MH and Swiftstell Bludgeon on my OH. Read here why I chose the offhand.

I am very pleased with the results I have gotten. Yesterday I posted I broke 2200 DPS and max deep wound tick is 2400 damage this is boring for some of my readers but hey that was my record haha.

Last night here was my highest dps during KJ attempts

I broke 2400 dps! Cairnexus is Steve btwy if you read my last post about warrior dps. He is specced 15/46/0 and is a beast on the meters he broke 3500 dps last night lolwhut?

And my highest deep wound tick ....

Max 3849 Dmg Tick ^_^. I'm slowly getting up there with the Big boys not quite yet but I'm on the right track.

Let's stop and check what else is going on there.

1. Do you see whats the % of HS? I was spamming it like shadowbolts haha <3.

2. No executes on the chart. We didnt get him to 20% the time I took SS. I'm curious if it will up my dps to spam HS and executes(both rage dumps so really risky being rage starve) or I'm better off sticking with my HS spams. We'll see on Sunday.

3. Deep wounds is a big part of my DPS, close to 30%. Fast offhand ftw?

What did I do different from the other night?

a.) Well I got a new helm from Illidari council from the last time I recorded my data. I replaced my S4 helm with it no meta gem bonus though on both.

b.) I also regemmed some of my 10str to 5str/crit. I wanted to replace more but I might get new gloves, belt or gasp... shoulders and legs? gloves and belt sounds more realistic due to the line ahead of me.

c.) I used sharpening stones on both of my weapons +14crit on each weapon +12 dmg(I'm not sure about this one).

d.) We had a feral druid who kept mangle up. Really nice boost to Deep Wounds.

Again the purpose of this spec is to crit as much as you can and as fast as you can to keep deep wounds rolling. I keep repeating this because this is a new school of thought for warriors that I have to remind myself everynow and then.

I'm not sure if this is everything that contributed for the 200+dps increase and the +1400dmg on Deep wounds. But this is all I can think of for now. Now I want to do more ... am I greedy or what? It's me being competitive I guess and the pleasures and pains of experimenting gear and specs is what drives me. Did I mentioned it's fun?

My Homework:

1. Enchant my offhand *edit I just did last night after raid with mongoose.

2. Decide what I want to do with Sunmotes when it's my turn. I want the leather gloves but the plate gloves is also tempting hmmm.... any suggestions?

3. Need more haste and crit .... yeah ...

4. I'd like to try 53/8 with my new bracers, boots and helm see what numbrs I come up with a new weapon would be awesome. And eventually 15/46/0.

If you want to try this spec and have any question or you have any suggestions please feel free to comment or stop by Eredar server to say whats up.

EDIT* DISCLAIMER

If you want to try this spec with incite IT IS HIGHLY ADVISABLE you have a feral druid in the raid or another fury warrior with rampage. 5% crit is alot especially if your spec is highly dependent on that stat.

Also you want to have near if not over 60% crit on Heroic strikes or else you will just be disappointed.

Arms spec is more forgiving if you don't have the right gear. I'm a big fan of fury that's why I don't stick to Arms spec for now so please attempt at your own risk with this spec(15/38/8). If you do decide gratz! Have fun!