Alt Appreciation : Monks

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Monks...

Oh-o..Monks, so, yeah, now I have a little problem. Looking through all my alts, I encountered 2 Monks. One lvl-12 Horde Panda, and one Tauren. The Panda was made to see the panda-start-zone. The Tauren because I wanted to see a Tauren roll.

Some months ago, I actually had a Dwarf Monk on Argent Dawn. That one made it to level 50-something, but I grew tired of the hit-to-heal mechanic, so he was deleted. But now, how to make a post about monks, when you don't have a monk.

So, here is the story of Doiral. Her first ten levels. Yes, Doiral, I actually wanted to name her Dorial, but I misspelled...  but Do-iral doesn't sound that bad. I made her a Draenai, mostly because it has been a while I was in that starting zone...  and the idea is that I eventually take her through the Alliance level 20-30 zones to see what happens there (in kalimdor). So...  logging in...  some story about the 'current' state of events, and tadaa..there she is.

Oh, yeah...Add-on-clutter all over the screen... so some clicks later, Doiral is ready to take her first quests.

Her second quest is killing some Vale Moths, here she is, hitting the moth for 15, wow. And after setting the loot on auto-loot...  (why isn't that standard), she is murdering the local wildlife.

Oh, look, new NPC here, a Panda:

And here comes the moment my memory is catching up, the Blood Elves are not hostile....  so the named mob can be pulled alone...

It is not, until I reach the second quest-hub, that Doiral encounters her first Hostile Mob...which is turned into some leather scraps quickly.

Ahem..../blush... that's what you get when you don't look around... I stumbled upon a pack of nightstalkers...  and they outnumbered me 3 to 1..

And tadaa, here she is, level 10, ready for more killing...and she didn't even do the furlborg-quests...

I did find questing with the monk fairly pleasant. I have no idea if a mist weaver actually gets healing spells later on, haven't seen them yet. Now, I am hoping Argent Dawn will be teamed up with another realm (which remains to be seen). Because then I can make more alts...


Next week...  My paladins will storm you all, remember the former subtitle of this blog:

Tankadin at Heart

First week in 5.4

One week of raiding past us, in a few hours the servers will be up, and the second week will start. And Innovation had a little strange raiding week, so what happened you ask, well..a LOT.

Innovation's first normal raid-day was thursday. As mentioned last pots, we already had a full guild-flexraid on wednesday, and behold, that did help us. It seems so far that the mechanics are the same on flex and normal, only doing less damage on flex.

So before we knew it we killed Immerseus. It seems this is a typical first-boss-loot-pinhata-boss. So, we gathered up our purples, and went outside to the Fallen Protectors. Now, I think we wiped once on them in flex, new mechanics and such, so I was expecting the normal version to be a little harder...  which it was...  it took us 1 wipe more and they where down.

So, after some trash stuff, we encountered another Titan-construct, Norushen. This one only wanted to test us, because it thinks we are full of Pride. Well, maybe we where...  because this one kept us occupied the rest of the night.

On sunday we returned, and make short work of Norushen's Pride-test. We entered the next room, where half of the raid died to irritating trash. After that, we went to work on Sha of Pride... and yes, I am still half expecting a Sha of Happiness...  This Sha had a lot of stuff going, stacking up, freeing prisoners, little adds, big adds, pride-meter, different boss-abilities on different pride-levels, and a nasty DoT.

But, through wiping, you learn, and the longer the night lasted, the lower Sha's Health went. We ended the night with the last two wipes below 10%, one 3.9 and one 4.something if I remeber correctly. So, we knew this one would go down on tuesday.

Tuesday rolled along, and behold, the first wipe was at 4%. So basically where we left Sha on Sunday. The next pull ended in a 0.4% wipe... really... been a while for a wipe like that. Next one he went down. Get the loot, gather up for the killshot-picture, and try not to trip over a big axe someone left behind....ask our Hunter  :)

Jaina, the homicidal priest, teleported us to a ship near the docks of Ogrimmar. And then to the actual docks. We destroyed some cannons, and then we had to shoot a dragon from the sky, while fighting some waves of orcs, and meanwhile making sure that the NPC's weren't killed. That last one was sometimes Hilarious. Our second wipe was because Varian decided to pull aggro of the Tank...  which resulted in a wipe where everyone was still alive...

The pull after that, Jaina decided stand by the towers, she really must like those, where she was out of reach..and promptly died to something. I think the fourth pull actually brought Galakras down, after which the fight was over. The road to Ogrimmar lie open before us.

Problem was, the goblins build a large scorpid-like apparatus with lasers and guns and bombs and more stuff.... we also met up with Baine and Vol'Jin. This fight was at the end of the night. I think the first pull was after 10, while we raid till 11. Basically, I think most of us where getting tired and already happy with this weeks progress, and I actually expected that the raid would be called early.

But, ok, we did had one hour left, so let's do some pulls to see how this boss goes...  two pulls later:

So, after one week raiding, Innovation is 6/14. This has been, in number of Boss Kills, the 'best' raiding week Innovation had since the start of Cataclysm. And also by far the best start of a new Tier. I cannot actually remember a second bosskill in the first week..

This also makes me wonder if these bosses are to easy, or that latter bosses will be much harder? And also the time we have left.  Keep in mind, that last tiers of expansions tend to take a little longer then previous tiers. So, we might be in Ogrimmar for a while. We are John Snow-ed about the next expansion, so I actually expect us to be here for the next 6 months at least... oh well.

Servers will be up soon, time to defeat a celestial, kill a firegod, and see what this week brings...

So..we heared your alts had it though?

The timeless Isle, where Timeless refers to lag I guess...

There are so many people running around, that everything dies within seconds, see a rare, quick tag it, it will die in 10 seconds, after which it takes 40 seconds to loot the Epoch Stone....

I do like the minimap-sumbol for a rare, and I heard from a Big Butt source that it also works for all the rares in the world now.

I did get my legendary cloak fairly easy. Stand in the arena and wait till your faction tagged all four once (and get a Tier-pants in the progress), run around killing rares and opening chest and do some quests to get 5000 coins was fast enough. Get some backstory, and tadaa... Legendary with wings.

After the small story from Cho (He is out to kill us), back to the Isle, to kill the only-if-you-have-the-legendary-on-any-character-boss Ordos...Ordos... weren't they the green faction in Dune 2? I think I may have been in the first group of people that killed him on Argent Dawn. I know the group was forming for a while, like more then an hour, before I got my cloak.  The boss itself is a pushover. About the same health as the Sha of Loot, and with less strannge abilities. Some firey stuff, some exploding stuff.

Ooh..and opening chests on the Isle, I'll tell you, before the end of the wekend, when all my alts have travelled to the isle, all my alts will be near Ilvl 396. There is so much BoA-loot that drops, that I already have some gear for low-level alts, if they ever reach 90....

And then there is a thing to upgrade a token tot 535..  which I ried on a ring...  that wasn't a succes. The ring was worse then the upgraded shadopan-ring...  ala, maybe try it on a BoA-trinket later on. Having enough alts, means enough tokens to do that.

So, yeah, we heard you didn't like how all your alts didn't get enough time to get loot... well..here it is. The Lag-Island of loot.

Oh, and Innovation started to raid. So, wednesday we tested flex...with a full-blown raidgroup of 25... yeah..  well, it helped us last night..but that's another story.

Alt Appreciation : Mage

Continuing the Alt Appreciation started by World of Lae.  This week:  Mages

I should call this the Lurche's I guess. Yes that does sound awfully familiar to the URL, and one of the two actually had that name for a long time. So let's see what happened...and where did the other Lurche came from?

Lurge
Undead Mage-Frost
Current level: 83
Reached max level in TBC and Wrath.
Born: Ghostlands
Moved to Argent Dawn, renamed Lurche, then moved to Steamweedle cartel

Lurge has been around a long time, and in my mind he will be called Lurge, not Lurche. It's a little bit unclear to me when I actually started to play him. It must have been in '07, because I remember that I actually had him in another guild then Retribution. Not that that lasted long. Somewhere he joined XII, and was my second character to reach level 40..then 50, 60 and 70. I even did a raid or two with him in Karazhan. If you notice the gear on the pic down here, you see he was a tailor.

After my raiding-days where over, he was transferred, just like most of my toons, to Single Abstract Noun on Argent dawn..where I had to Frenchify his name a little bit. I had some more fun times with him, but at the start of data, I went Alliance, and he was sort of left behind.  He had to move to another server becasue of a new Lurche, but, I did play with him later in the expansion. I just love the way undead cast frost bolts.

Here is a picture of Lurge, the undead Frost mage.

Now, to the other mage...  

Lurche

Dwarveb Mage-Frost

Current level: 77

Part of Innovation's Class Act

Born: Argent Dawn

So, yeah, the dorf Mage, where did he came from, well...from cataclysm's Class Act. There was guild-achievement to get every class/race combination to 85, and somewhere, about two years ago, we found out we missed some of then. So 5 members of the Innovation raiding team made some little alts. I apparantly went Dwarf-Mage. Gunho went Dwarf-Priest, Moreor went Dwarf-Warlock, Merrai went Gnome-Rogue and Calaron went Gnome-Warrior.

This didn't went fast, and we were overtaken by others, or even by ourselves I guess. But we had fun with them. No idea if we are going to continue with them soon, or ever. A choice that probably has to be made shortly.

Here he is, sporting the levelling-heirlooms:

I must say that I do like frost. I did try Arcane on Lurche, and one of my lower-level, and forgotten alts is a Fire Mage, but just having that big Water Elemental besides you...well...

Next week...  monks....oh my.

Innovation eats Heroic Eggs

Last week of Throne, one more evening of wiping, and boy, this was an interested fight.

Ji-Kun Heroic, wipes 22 (although I missed one night), kills: 1

The whole fight revolves around watching boss cooldowns, and being on your nest in time.  I was assigned to group Green, which meant I had nest-wave 3,7,9,13,14. 

On the upper nest my Celestial Allignment was up, and with Mozzie the Shadowpriest, that would be enough, so Gestalt the Rogue could continue stabbing Ji-Kun.

On the lower nest, Gestalt would help, and here happened a fun thing. The moment we where finished with the lower nest, a 'feed young'  was about to happen.  When caught, this would give you a nice buff. One problem, the cooldown for that coincided for group Green with a Downdraft. So we where just standing for 10 seconds on a lower nest, while our teammates probably went ballistic with downdraft, flew up just in time to catch food...

Of course something hiccup during the last fight. Apparantly Henghao the Resto-shammy was killed just before Mozzie and me jumped down to nest 9...  I noticed it a split second to late, and boom, both of us hit the dust. But at 20% only 4 people where down...  

This thursday, Siege of Ogrimmar is on, let's see what the orcs bring us.

Innovation vs. Throne of Thunder, the recap.

Somewhere during the vacation, Innovation took down Lei Shen Normal. It was on a Sunday-evening (which made the tuesday a free day that week), and I was playing on my Laptop. But how did we get there?

We didn't actually started right away with ToT when 5.4 hit. We did kill Jin'rokh of course, but we still had to finish 5.2. According to my post "end of 14th tier" we really started one month after 5.2 came out, and it took us around 3.5 months to clear ToT after that.

But most of this post is from memory, so let's go... (dates are from the screenshots on our website)

11-3 Jin'rokh the Breaker

Not much to say about this one, we had some problems with dead melee at the start, but once we figured out that they died because a ball was pulled through them after a storm he went down fast. Fun part is that we actually never steered him to regulate the tank-drop until we started doing the heroic version.

12-4 Horridon

Oh god, a so called ON-Boss, we had roadblocks with ElegON and GaralON this expansion, and this was the same. A big dinosaur, adds with nasty mechanics everywhere, so a lot of mayhem. But, it is one of those bosses with lots of mechanics that most of the time matter for other roles, so when we found out or path, he went down easily.

25-4 Council of Elders

Looking at the dates, it seems we had problems with this boss, but iirc, we were still doing some T14 for the tier sets during the first month after killing Sha. Actually I only remember one night of wiping. we figured out what was our biggest problem, i.e. Sul, made sure he became empowered second and never again. After that it was just making sure you didn't kill yourself on Mankirk... or something like that  :p

15-5 Megaera

Now Tortos that was...wait Megaera, what happened? Well, there was a guild-meet, so not enough people to raid. So they decided to do a 10 man and plower through Tortos, next raid was full again so we slaughtered the three-headed dragon. This was quickly done, just changing some colors around, think we went with BRBRGRB or something.  Green was 5th...

22-5 Tortos

The turtle on 25 took another week. According to the ten people who killed it, the 25-version was a little harder, mostly due to less adds on 10. Oh well, he went down.

28-5 Ji-Kun

A week later, the Bird was up.. I am seeing almost the same trend in T15 as T14, it takes us about one week for every boss, but after that, not much wiping. This was a fun boss, fly around, kill some birds and move on. The trick is for everyone to follow their path, and don't die..now on heroic..this is a complete different fight....

12-6 Durumu the Forgotten

Eye-boss. Don't move when blue, run to rd, run in circles, do not stand in unseeable blue stuff, follow green, dont get pushed of platform.  Seem hectic,  but once we got the purply swirly stuff under control, it was fairly easy.

18-6 Primordius

I have no idea, and still have no idea how we do this boss. Heroism always comes to early for me, and for me it is mostly getting buffs ASAP, staying out of bad... trying to get no debuff..and then figuring out there's only 3% left...

23-6 Dark Animus

Thumbwrestling for 6 minutes and then OMGWTFKill it quickly. On 25 normal, you can actually do it without the fire running around. So, get aggro on your mob, wait till it gets eaten by the tank, then kill everything the tank pulls, and then kill Dark Animus, again ignoring big adds.  It took us 6 pulls or so. Finetuning the walking was all that was done.

27-6 Iron Qon

Fire (or whatever) tracks around, group up, tornadoes, shields are up captain. A lot is happening, but just as with Horridon in phases. So Learn one phase, then the next. Four days after Animus, so not that hard.

27-6 Twin Consorts

This was a very hard fight, a lot of wipes until we mastered it..well..  remember Lei Shi...  this was easier. Innovation went in, pew-pewee, and we had ourselves a real one-shot. So only one boss left....

28-7 Lei Shen

....which took us a little longer. Which is not that bad, it's the end-boss, it should be harder. There was a lot of changing tactics, when to pull a boss away, and of course, he getting-into-the-groove when Lei Shen stood in the middle. We extended once or twice, and it was vacation of course, which also took some raiders away, myself included. But, in the middle of Summer, he, a little unexpected, went down.

After that.

In the last Month, Innovation also took down Jin'Rokh on Heroic, and we are trying that with Ji'kun, but next week Ogrimmar awaits. In conclusion, we did well. We started a little late, but progressed nicely through the tier.

Now we have to face Hellscream and the flex-raids...oh my....wait, 4 different raid-levels with 6 different I-levels, are they mad?  But that's another post I guess....

Alt Appreciation : Hunters

It is Hunter Week , following the alt appreciation-theme of World of Lae

Hasn't everyone played a hunter? That's what I sometimes ask myself. My very first character, called Mendak, was a Dwarf hunter, he had a pet-bear from Ashenvale called Ursa, and boy, was I a newbie. I remember loggin on him once, with some more knowledge, and I just was laughing at my equipment. Everything was hunter-gear, wasn't it?

Alas, poor Mendak, he was on the Ghostland server, and in my Horde-only empire there, he had to go. He was replaced by, and I quote a friend; "The ugliest female orc I have ever seen." She was called Miriani. Miriani reached level 70 during the fun-patch just before Wrath of the Lich King, but she did a quick Zul'Aman raid.

She was my third character to reach 70, and was (still is) a miner/jewelcrafter. After XII she was put into our friends-guild, and she stayed their a while, up until the ICC-summer. She was then transfered with a lot of stuff to Argent Dawn, had to be renamed to Luaran, and was turned into a Draenai for a short while.

She is now an Orc again, level 85 and made her first steps onto Pandaria. However, I don't know how long she (and her companion Gowron) will be on AD. those are two spots I could use for Alliance Alts, maybe the new merging of servers will help.

And here she is, with her pet Miriani...

In the meanwhile, during Cataclysm, I levelled an Alliance Hunter on Argent Dawn, called Forak. He was actually my third character to reach 90. And he is a real farmer. Mining and Herbalism, although mining may be axed soon to make him a flask or potion master. I am not doing much with him, he is now actaully farming ore on his farm, so here have a picture of him, with his pet Picard, on the farm.

Now I do have more hunters, a undead one somewhere, a Troll Hunter called Jimi, with a pet called Hendrix, but I haven't played those in ages. And there are a plethora of hunters deleted, or way-low-level. But it is always nice to play a Hunter, Scatter shot, send in pet, and feign death....