Tuesday 30 March 2010

Blackrock Depths/Temple of Atal'Hakkar

BRD and ST... Cloud has been running those a lot last week. With different succes. There's a real problem with those two... the place of the entrance, the way daily-random-bosses are placed, and ofcoure, their inner layout.

Entrance.

Both dungeons have a maze before their actual entrance, most of the people these days don't know the way back, which ofcourse means that almost every wipe is end of party.

Daily Random-bosses.

In ST you need to kill Eranikus, which is the upper part. In all the runs I have only seen the lower part once. People just skip that part, which is not strange, considering the faxt that you have to click statues in a different order.

BRD actually has two levels. BRD-prison and BRD-upper. Both start at the beginning, so you have no way to know which you are doing. Luckily, prison only needs one boss-kill (2nd hall to the right). So you figure it out fast enough. But now you are in upper... and no one has the key. Not that it has happened to me yet.. Fun part is of cousre you have to die to get the quest. So you have to know how to get to BRD... see the problem arising here.

Inner Layout.

Well, if you only do upper-ST, it is fairly simple, just stay close to each other, else you will loose people.

BRD is something different, let's see from memory.

Enter
Kill 2 mobs.
Enter a big room with lots of hallways.
Take the second on the right, kill all untill boss (Head boss for Prison)
Go back. (1st and 3rd on left just are alternative paths, or for a quest)
Take second hallway on the left (from entering big room).
Clear all, until you find Roccor, or he finds you.
Boss Houndmaster is in the first room on the right side.
Second room on right is the Arena, all enter together, and you'd better not stand behind gates.
(If you took third from the right, the first room on the left is arena...)
After completing Arena, exit the other way.
>>>hold, what about the first hallway to the right? Well it goes to a door, which you can open with the key to enter the same place you are now, see, a little shortcut.

Now this room which you are in, is not big, has 2 levels, is packed with mobs, has 2 entrances (one with key) and two exits. One exit goes even further up, the other one goes around a corner to a half-opened door, which you can open with the key on the lower-part of the room...

Oh at the entrance btw, you can also directly use the key to ge left, to the last boss of lower-city, and then you can go the other way around, back . And in that room just mentioned, just before the half-opened door, you can actually jump down to achieve the same, and then go back... and..

And that's just the start. Very Confusing for people. Hope you have some one who knows the way. After this, it becomes a little bit more linear. But there are a lot of things to watch out for. Especially in the bar...

But, I do like it. Lots of work to do, lots of bosses, lot of things to look at. Just be ready for a good 2 hours of this. I really smile evrytime I see someone asking 'How Long till end?'. And I laugh at the 'Gogogo' and 'Plz Fast'-comments.

Really, never rush yourself in BRD. Almost every dwarf runs away when almost beaten to death. And will pull additional mobs.... and it is really crowdy, before you know it, you have 15 dwarves, 2 fire elementals and several hounds beating on your party...

Monday 29 March 2010

Cataclysm - Politics.

I was just reading the books of Lore found all over the world, when my mind started to wander.

We have some information about the politics in Cataclysm.

1. Hellscream will be the new leader for the Orcs.
2. Hellscream will throw out most Blood Elfs and Undead from Ogrimmar.
3. Hellscream will execute Bloodhoof for treason.
4. Night Elfs will 'welcome' some of their long lost High-Elf brothers back.

Let us start with the Horde.

Executing Bloodhoof for treason? The only thing I can actually see Bloodhoof doing, is not wanting to declare open warfare on the Alliance. The Tauren are a mostly peace-full people, only taking up arms if they are threatened. So, how will the executing of their beloved leader fall on all Taurens.... I suppose they will not be very happy.

Undeads and Bloodelfs also will be very distrusting about Hellscream. They don't know him, so why should he be leader of the Horde? And he expels them from the orc-city, not a good base for trust, I would say.

Now let's speculate some more.

What are the Undead going to do, now Arthas, the sole reason they existed is death? And keep in mind, that most of the Undead are in fact risen citizens of Lordearan, former humans that is, and most of them still remember their past lives. Although they do not want to.

The High-Elves are returning. They will join the Night-Elves in a fight for good (I pressume). But, are the High-Elves not closer to the Blood-Elves, then to the Night-Elves. And if the Night-Elves welcome High-Elves back, could that also be the start of getting the Night-Elves and Blood-Elves closer together again.

Will the aggressive path of the new Orc-Leader be the end of the New Horde? I wouldn't be surprised that the Undeads and Blood-elfs would say goodbye, and that the Taurens would seal Mulgore, and let the Orcs, Trolls and Goblins go their way.

It's just, what are the long-term consequences of alienating half of the people in the Horde.....

Friday 19 March 2010

Clouds' on the move.

Well, my idea was to actually write a blog before this, but, alas, playing got in the way.

Cloudcaller is no 36, mostly using the lfd-function. Although I did some questing killing animals for skinning. And like a friend of mine says, he is a bane to all cloth-wearers. well, there's hardly any sp-leather at low levels.

Few things about the last 25 levels, but especially about level 20.

Level 20 gives you some new spells, most importantly is water-shield. This finally gives you the mana-regen you need to not drink that much, or rather almost never. But lvl20 also gives you a quest, to get your third totem. And it is a drag. It sends you all over the world to get water. Tarren Mill, Ashenvale and finally the sepulcher... oh, and it starts and ends somewhere in the southern barrens. At that level it means a lot of travelling, because you probably don't have the flightpaths yet. Luckily you also get a Kodo at level 20 these days. But, it will take you about an 60-90 minutes to do the quests, with not that much xp, so it seems slow.

And there's the problem with glyphs. I actually used glyph of flametongue for more crit until I got Earthliving. And at the moment I am using Water Shield and Healing Totem. I am really looking forward to lvl40, when we get that spell everybody knows of resto-shammies, Chain Heal. And then I should probably re-evaluate my glyphs again. I don't think any other class has this problem.

And, btw, the first tier of resto-talents suck... You got the option between faster Healing Waves, and cheaper totems. Now totems are not that expensive, and the moment you get lesser healing wave, you almost forget about healing wave. And why is my 'cleanse' button a talent? I had to explain to a PuG in RFD that I couldn't remove the debuff from the gong-boss, because I wasn't lvl40 yet...

And on PuGs, I find myself getting more harsh with each level I get. Look, as a teacher, I have no problems helping people. Especially with finding your way around dungeons, or finding the entrance (which happens a lot). But at level 30 you should have a basic grasp what is good for you, so no more needing on spellpower if you are a hunter.

Oh, and I had my first leecher yesterday. It was an armory-run. Our tank d/c-ed so we vote-kicked her, and of course no new tank showed up for the next 15 minutes. But the arms-warrior did a good job, so we just cleared trash, with three people, because the warlock was on /follow. We tried to loose him, but every time we did that, he just moved and put himself on follow again.... and we couldn't kick him, because we already had used our kick.

Neext dungeon, Cathedral, other warlock, but he just went AFK from the start. The moment we where ready for Mograine, he started to move again, but a quick vote-kick by me was passed, luckily... and we just 4-manned it. I hate leechers..

On level 30, you get your fourth totem, this time no long questline, just a quick delivery in 1k needles. And you get a quest to ditch your four totems for a single one, that counts for all, and it is equipable, yeah, more bag-space.

So far for shammie-levelling. To end, my story about last weeks Saurfang. I was a Tree, and my co-healer was a resto-shammie, who kept putting down cleansing totem... oh well, everything died, without many deaths on our side, so.

Now, durng the first three bosses, I had real big mana-problems, and even my new trinket from marrow/lady D.? didn't help me with that. And that problem really was a problem on Saurfang, as both me and the shammie ran out of mana at 30%. Problem: No ret-palyy/surv-hunter/frostmage, i.e. replenishment. So... we had one of our tree mages change spec to frost :)

So gone where the mana-problems, and when Saurfang hit 30% the second time, I still had 50% mana orso, and that was a good thing, becaus I needed it all. Saurfang casted his mark of heavy-sustains-through-death-damage on the shammy. My first thought was, cool, he can heal himself, while I keep focusing tanks. WRONG. I just sw his health going down, and when I finally reached the conclusion that he wasn't going to heal himself, it was to late. So splat went the shammy, and saurfang gained some health. Shammie anked, went splat again and saurfang gained more health... Solo-healing the last 30% of saurfang is hard... but I got it done, with no other deads iirc. I was exhausted after that though, gambling with health-bars for a minute or a half is not fun.

Wednesday 17 March 2010

The first steps.

Well, cloudchaser was taken, so my shaman is now named cloudcaller, still a dreamy name for a Taurahe.

So, there he was standing, with the big yellow ! before him. Now I have done the tauren starting area a few times, so I knew how to run, and what to expect. Get a jug, kill some plainstriders, kill some wolves, kill some bears, some thistleburs...

Well, somethings have changed, the thistleburs are no longer aggressive, so the valley became a cake-walk. The times I died there in the past. And the mana-cost of your Lightning Bolt is only 3, combined with the all-new super mana/health regen till 20, I could just spam LB.

At lvl5 you get your first totem, the earth one. You need to walk all the way back into the thistlebur valley and kill two shamans, and then you have to find a stone. Not hard, a little time-consuming though.

After that, I made my way out of the starting-zone, picked up a lot of quests, and walked to Thunderbluff to learn skinning and leatherworking. It took me some walking around to find a skinning knife. The LW-supplier doesn't have one. I found a trade-goods vendor on the lowest level tucked away in a tent, so I missed her twice, that sold one.

Back to bloodhoof, and start killing everything that moves. After two circles I reached level 10 (luckily SAN had some bags in the guildbank). So the next stop was a quest-giver in the barrens for my next totem.

I took the new zeppelin to ogrimmar, to pick up the Flightpath, and to learn some more weaponskills. The zeppelin had a vend-o-matic (yeah, food and drinks) and a gear-o-matic (where I could get a skinning knife....).

When I reached the zep-tower, I noticed a yellow ! on the map. Apparantly a troll wants me to get some anti-dote. I have never noticed this quest until now, well, what would you do in that corner before the tower was put there?

Now, this lvl10-shaman-quest... that's time-consuming. The NPC in the barrens send you up the hidden path to a troll. He then wants two reagents. One is dropped by lvl12-13 casters, who stand in the middle of a lot of other thistleburs, and some patrolling hunters. The other reagent is in a cave North-East of... that orc-town. It is also on a place you will almost not see, unless you walk to it.

After returning the items, I had to fight a fire-elemental. To my surprise an 80-pally was standing on the top. What is he doing there, this is for shammans only, but, well, he just healed me, while I killed the elemental. And back to the original quest-giver to get my fire-totem.

This quest took me about an hour I think, the places are not that close together, and I did some detouring (killing scorpids and getting crossroads-fp). I had hoped to reach lvl15, and do a random, but only reached 11.

And now, the barrenschat....

Tuesday 16 March 2010

The birth of Cloudchaser

Well, at least I hope that name is available, but I have to wait till one of my current characters has been moved to Sha'tar to create a new one on AD.

The idea of course is to make a genuine RP-character. That is what SAN is about I think, doing something new. At least the faction is set then, Horde.

Now the race, well, that would be tauren (the wise) or troll (the crazy). I will go for tauren, and play the wise one.

And then the class. Well, I would like paldin, but cata is not here yet, and that means priests are also not an option (why is there not a pally-trainer in TB yet?). So left are warrior, druid and shaman. Well, warrior not really, I already said I would play the wise one... charging in on mobs hardly seems wise. And my main-raiding character at the moment is a tree, so I don't feel like druiding. Leaves the Shaman. (re: and hunter, but I choose shaman)

Spec... again, running close to a mob doesn't seem wise, so no enhancement, leaves elemental and restoration. Both fit the idea of a wise man. Think I go for resto, mainly because I can do some dungeons then without long waiting.

Professions... now we have a catch. I did some reading about shamans, and they are 'in touch' with the world. They hold high regards to the eartmother (no worshipping though). So they would view people taking from the land, ravagers. And they also let nothing to waste... so no mining and herbalism (taking from the land) allowed, but skinning can be done. Well I had to kill the beast, but I will make his skin into something new... oh, that means Leatherworking then.

Now I only need a history, Taurens are just like Klingons. Remembering their father's father deeds and before that... and being a horde shaman, they tend to not like undead and bloodelfs, although they where responsible (at least the azeroth shaman organisation Earthen Ring) for getting the undead into the horde.

So, next item, find a history...

Monday 8 March 2010

SAN: Ragefire Chasm

What do you get, when you put a lot of people from the blogosphere, who normally just type what's in their head, on their little space of the web, or the readers of those, in one guild?

Lots of friendly people, just talking away, doing stuff on low level characters. Ragefire Chasm, Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep become nice again.

So, last saturday, Gowronn reached lvl16. That mend Righteous Fury and Hand of Reckoning. I innocently wrote in /g, that I finally was ready to tank, the result:



The party considered of Tobold (Tobold's MMORPG Blog), Hadawako(Fail PUG!), Randomaia (blog-reader) and Shasti (no idea, adding later).

We ofcourse cleared it without problems... well, what did you expect, 5 people who are part of the blogosphere, you can bet they know how to play :)

Of course, I also pugged a lot. One run to Wailing Caverns again teamed me up with Randomaia, I think it lasted 2 hours, going through several healers and dps, because they didn't realise it would take that long. Or as Randomaia said; " I think my beard grew 2 centimeters during this run"

Gowron is now lvl25. He is specced into ret-tanking. Seal of Command at low levels is a very good threat-machine, together with faster judgements. I also took the Glyph of SoC, less mana-problems, means faster runs (almost no drinking). Think I switch to full ret when Blessing of Sanctuary becomes available.

On the Allie-side of AD: My Warlock started levelling again, and I specced her into Affliction. And tonight my Tree will be healing ICC10, if all goes well. Fester or that other one are on the menu.... or are we on theirs?

One thing puzzles me though. All guides say, gem for haste. But my Nourish (and GCD) is allready on 1.13sec. And that's exactly what my playing style needs. And being one of two healers, I am spamming Nourish a lot, so I actually gemmed for crit mostly. And it gives the benefit that most gear is interchangeable with Boomkin-spec. Can anyone enlighten me?

Friday 5 March 2010

Single Abstract Noun

What is this?




Some days ago, Tam at Righteous Orbs, called out to all bloggers to go to Argent Dawn (europe) and form a blogging guild. A place to hang out, and talk to each other. I thought about it, and I did like the idea, but the problem was, that with mu althoism, all slots where filled on AD, with alliance-characters, and the guild was horde.

So I had to delete a character to join... in the end, Mendak, my very casual, non-heirloomed-priest, went the way of the dodo.

Thusfar the /gchat has been lively, some nice discussions about C&C and Dune (old strategy-games), movies and other stuff. And of course I made a pally, called Gowronn. (well, Gowron ws taken... by myself). There are about 60 players thusfar.

And on another note, it is very hard to find spellpower-leather with hit. It seems only the tier-pieces have it... that means my ilvl200-belt is very much needed atm. I culd re-gem, but a lot of gear is crosslinked to my tree-form.... oh well.


Edit: Just read that on the US Argent Dawn, a sister-project is started with the same idea.

Wednesday 3 March 2010

Going Restokin

I had two days of theorycraft-reading. How to Tree, and How to Lazerchicken.

Th conclusion was simple, I have been gemming wrong. Talents where also not really right, but I already knew that, I just specced for heroics a while back, not for raids.

So now all my spellpower/spirit and spellpower/intellect have to be replaced, well, not all spellpower/spirit gems. There's also a different way to gem for both treesm Tree likes haste more, while Chicken likes more crit (in boomkin my haste is 550, so crit>haste). This is something I am not really happy with.

I will probably be tree in our guilds 10mens, but I may also apply to a raiding community as chicken... so I probably need some dual-gears, gemmed differently.

The fact remains, I don't really see the use of more haste on tree to help me out, most of the time I just HoT away, and on that ICC last I used Nourish a lot, which already has a low casting time.

So, time to make a lot of Spellpower/Crit gems I guess, now how did that work with converting honor-points to gems, some of my alts have a lot of that, and those tokens you get in dungeons while your side has Wintergrasp are also growing to humor-heights.

But... I like Theorycrafting, so...

Tuesday 2 March 2010

Changes

Cataclysm-changes, I think 75% of the blogs write about it, I don't feel like writing about it now, to much will change.

The guildleader of my new guild, left the server this weekend, leaving Gunho, me and Tjaoten in charge, We changed some of the goals, and we will probably be doing ICC10 two days/week.

That does mean, I will probably change my main-raiding-char Gowron, to my tree/lazerchicken Mardah. We have the tanks/DPS, but no healers.

So, a lot of changes, time to rant.

I did a LFD-Oculus yesterday. Really, I can not heal you, if you fly through the orbs, get pounded by 15 drakes, and taking damage from that dragon... and then accusing me of not to play well.