Another WoW-version? Surely I don't have time.... part Deux

 And before you know it, it is the end of November  December. So, a recap:

Classic:Hardcore

I had fun, lost some characters because I was stupid. But I completely stopped playing hardcore because of two reasons. and those are the next two...  

Innovation is raiding again, so 3 weeks a night for about 4 hours I am raiding. But... I am not sure how long this will last. Not because we have troubles far from it, but we may clear HC soon....

Ice versus Fire

he first week we raided, we cleared Normal. That is something that has not happened in a long time, normally we take about 3 resets to take down the end boss on Normal. In week 2 we had to do HC on Sunday, because we where already done in Normal. This is Raid week (iirc) and on Thursday we did Normal, AND 2 HC bosses.

And on Sunday we took down two new bosses. One of them , Larodir was a pushover... and we should have gotten it down 2 pulls earlier if a certain mage hadn't fekked up Time Warp  :p And we now need to prepare for Smolderon HC on Tuesday... we are already 6/9 HC in week 3... and the week has not finished yet.

Snake in a Hot-tub

Meanwhile... there is ANOTHER version of WoW... Season of Discovery. And this is probably the biggest reason I stopped playing Classic-HC. I already have a Paladin on lvl24, but I got bored... and well.. you can make 50 alts.... I do think the idea of runes is nice, reminds me of the old Inscription system. I am a little bit worried about later phases though. Some of the stuff needs 2 or 3 other players, and I hope they are still around in later phases.

André the Tanakdin and his Runes

At the moment though, some zones are just to busy. I tried to take down some Gnolls in Redridge on the Pally, but  quickly stopped that, to busy, so I levelled some alts. Let's see where this ends...

Another WoW-version? Surely I don't have time....

A More as a month ago, in the middle of my vacation, I think I was in the Republic of Ireland at that time, Innovation killed Sarkareth HC. Well done. Last week 4 weeks ago, I also got my AotC, still needed a good 6 pulls for the kill. And at this moment Innovation is on a break till next Raid, something with the Emerald Dream,

I did play some WoW during vacation. Mostly leveling, getting pets from the Fyrakk-thingie, but nothing that would keep me glued to the PC for along time. And then, something happened during my last week in Wales. Stories started to creep in of something new... well new.. I heard of it before, but now it was Blizzard-sanctioned. World of Warcraft: Classic :  Hardcore had started. And I was like... naah, don't have time for that...  

I posted this on the last day of August on the Innovation-Discord:

And this is now:

Of those original 16, only Mardah the Hunter has died, I was stupid enough to try the Cave just above Dolanaar.. didn't made it out, I learned 2 lessons there.

1. If it feels unsafe, it is unsafe.

2. Don't keep stacks of stuff on a char while questing. Mardah had about 100 Light Leather on her when she died. So I am definitely using a bank alt now (the 2 new chars on the list).

And Ealfreda, Forsaken Priest died due to Undercity-lift glitch. I actually waited till it was up again , walked in, but between arriving and going down, there was like 1 second delay, not enough to fully be on it.. so.. yeah.. lesson learned, never use lift on higher chars. Not much was lost.

Aelfreda falls to her death in the glitching Undercity Elevators

Mardah started over again, Aelfreda was replaced by Wemko, Troll Priest.

As you can see, some chars seem to be pulling ahead of the pack. On Alliance, not surprisingly, it is Gowron the human paladin. Three weeks ago on the Horde, it was surprisingly, Ynyrs, Troll Warrior, who also already had some very close calls. But now Lurge and Luaran caught up. This is mostly because last weekend, the EU server Stitches went awry.

Luckily I had some pre-warning, the night before, Gowron was getting the FP's in Feralas and Tanaris, and I had a worldlag just before I stepped on the lift down... I also had some long disembarking-times from the flightpaths. So, the next morning I decided to level some lower level alts to 10 when the server completely died, an estimated 800 characters also died. My Deathlog suddenly went mad and within 10 seconds I got 40 messages, and it continued for a while.

The Purge on Stitches-EU

On gearing, my mentality is a little bit different on HC, especially about leveling and weapons. As example Gowron, although he did have a 2H mace from the lvl12 yeti-kill quest in Dun Morogh, but at level 17 I was able to buy a lvl17 2H-axe of the boar (Stam/Strength) for about 30s with a sell value of 20s. Most of paladins damage come from auto-attack. I don't remember buying much on the AH for lower levels back in the day, but now... well death is death.

And for the leveling.. Gowron actually leveled to 10 in Elwyn Forest. But the rest of my alts have become more cautious. Doing 2 lvl 1-6 starterzones first, and after that going back and forth between zones to do... 'easier' quests, like 2 levels below own level most of the time.

Gowron going for some Candle... also note the deathlog

As mentioned before, my Horde characters are getting some playtime now, I am not trusting Stitches at the moment. So this weekend I played mage and hunter mostly. The Classic HC Hunter Guide on Wowhead has a funny bit. It recommends getting an Owl or Vulture as pet because of Screech. This ability does some ST damage and lowers the melee-damage for up to 4 mobs, so it has a high aggro ability, that seems helpfull, BUT... the guide fails to mention that the first bird that actually has that ability, and the only one with Rank1, is the Greater Fleshripper, lvl 16/17 in Westfall....

So, as Alliance, for the first few levels, you'd better get a boar, mostly because it eats everything, the birds only eat meat. For the Horde it gets more interesting. Getting to Westfall at that level is, well, difficult and not recommended for Hard Core I would say, so your first option for the bird is at level 32 in the Thousand Needles where the Salt Flats Vulture has Screech R2. So.. yeah... again, get a Boar, eats everything.

Luaran with her new Pet Boar, Stan.

Summer is upon us, 2023 edition.

 When I start writing this post, it is Monday the 17th of July. Next Thursday my summer-vacation starts, so playtime will go down, outside time will go up. I will be spending 5.5 weeks away from my home-PC and trusting on a 6-year old MSI-laptop. With Innovation's current schedule, I can raid 3 more times, and after that 10 raids will be very tentative. So, 3 more raids for a Sartharion-kill...oh my.

With the RL-injury of the other mage in Innovation... I suspect some dumb raids  :)

In other news, next patch will bring heritage armor for both Night-Elf and Undead. So bot Lurge and Mardah need to get that, maybe it is even time for Mardah to do the Blue Dragon-flight quests for the mount. There will also be new customizations, well.. no idea about that.

In the Alt-department, Timicin is trying to get a sword from LFR-Echo, and my lower level toons going for heritage armor on lvl50 are slowly progressing.

Today is Wednesday the 26th of July, so yes, sometimes it takes a while for something to be finished. Which is not what Innovation did with the raid last night. I hope they succeed during summer. Timicin is more lucky, and found his sword in the Vault. And Lorinthe, Green Destro lock also has joined my army of seventies last week

At least I got two Mega Dungeon runs in this week, time for vacation now.

Lurge listening to some Dragons

C-c-c-c-changes

I have to look it up, but somewhere it was mentioned that they removed the permanent option on Water Elemental, now it just spawns with Icy veins, because people where not actually speccing it anyway... well.. no shit Sherlock.. it was paired with Loneley Winter which was just a very big DPS-gain. It's not that people didn't want a permanent buddy, it's because you made it a dps-loss, and mage is a DPS-class....

Having that out of my system, the new Frost is interesting, and it forced me to change my Standard UI. I lost one spell, that is Rune of Power, but I gained three, Comet Storm, Glacial Spike and Ray of Frost. And I gained an utility, Mass barrier. That is 3 spells that at least need to be hot-keyed. And I also needed to have bigger acces to Damage reduction spells.

So I activated a new bar for all my DR's and put them all there. It has to be seen if that is handy, but at least I can see them more clearly now, and they are no longer on my hotbar, which may become a problem, have to test that in the next few weeks.

I already 'played' with the new spec on Tuesday's Raid (pre-patch). It was actually not that much of a dps-loss, and because we were farming lower-HC, it didn't matter much. I died several times because I was trying to figure out what to cast, instead of looking below my feet, but that is training. One thing I did noticed was that the new 'combo' can take a while.

In a situation that actually happens a lot imho, the 'combo' can take upto 10 seconds. I am talking about the next situation: Frostbolt-Flurry-Icestorm-Glacial Spike-Ray of Frost. On a boss like Experiments, where globes spawn that need to be killed fast, I noticed a lot of lost Winter Chills because I couldn't start the combo at the spawn. I should really learn to not use flurry, if I know target will not make it for the next 3 seconds.

So, the new casting memory is:

(with first spell having higher priority to following spells in case of choice)

Shatter-window:

Cast Flurry if last cast was Glacial Spike/Frostbolt or if Icicles=4

Cast Comet Storm

Cast Glacial Spike/Ice Lance

Cast Ray of Frost/Glacial Spike/Ice lance

Out of Shatter-window:

Cast Ice Lance with FoF-proc

Cast Frostbolt

Cooldowns:

Icy Veins on CD

Frozen Orb with Ray of Frost on CD and max 1 FoF-proc

Temporal Warp in Icy Veins

Shifting Power when IV,RoF,FO  are on CD (plus if you can do this in range)

.... and now it is Sunday, and we have Evokers, and we cleared it all rather easy upto Echo of Neltharion.. and this was what I was looking at after Magmorax: 

I guess Frost is better, and I promise not to eat the Evokers?

Who are all these people?

I know, I didn't played for three months, but still.. who are all these guildies?

I just re-read Eight years in Azeroth, and that got me on some memory-trips. The guild in that blog, Descendants of Draenor, had a rough time between Firelands and Dragon Soul. And this was just after they actually did all the achievements in Firelands. And I remembered what it as for Innovation. And if you don't, look at the posts from Januari 2012, and count the number of people in the kill-shots....

Innovation kills Normal Deathwing... with only 10 people

There are actually still a lot of people around now from that dark time. On the picture we see Eva, Synth, Moreor, Aletia and myself as Mardah. That is 5 people still raiding. And some names that still pop up often like now and then. And people long gone, like Charli and Zese (yes, we had an imba-rouge before Gestalt). Now, 7 people that signed up that evening couldn't come due to having to do it on 10, not 25...

But there where raiders before that, that have gone, like the infamous Wenny, Miralocolix,Juliej. And not that ago lost to the Aether, and hopefully returning one day Kris and Fuzzy. I actually have list of all players that partook in Mists of Pandaria, it's at the end through the whole of the following video:

To be honest, some of them may still be around, and I just forgot their old names  :p. But where was I going when I started writing, oh yeah, who are all those people. So many new people joined in the first few months of Dragonso...rrr... Dragonflight. And I hardly know them, and some of them never heard of Mardah, just Lurge... 

So welcome to Innovation:

 

Also, posted a few years ago, my thoughts back then what should be done:

https://lurge.blogspot.com/2013/08/archive-numbercrunching-innovation.html

Innovation 

It made me worse.

After rereading last post, I found myself asking why I wouldn't get 5/5 tier soon, before I remembered that I meant Heroic Gear upgrade level. And getting from 4/5 to 5/5 implies using a Mythic stone thing, which I probably won't get soon. So, this is a reminder for myself in the future what I meant.

A funny thing happened with last post, because of the silly names the frost mages gave to their rotations, the post got flagged for NSFW, or NSF-younger people. This seems to be an automatic process, because the flag was quickly removed after I re-submitted it, and some real person had a look at it. Not that different from WoW I suppose, although I read stories that it takes a little bit longer before some real person looks at it in WoW.

Wednesday : Sim day // The vault gives epic trinket.

After last week, I made some changes on how to Frost (single target). Mostly by prioritizing Flurry a lot. So my mind now basically looks at the following things:

* After Frostbolt-Flurry-Ice Lance, if I have a Brain Freeze proc (so my flurry button lights up) -> cast another Ice lance into FB-Flurry.

* After Frostbolt-Flurry-Ice Lance, if I have a Frost of Fingers proc (so my Ice Lance button lights up) -> cast Ice Lance into FB-Flurry. [this is I guess not right, but it seems with all the movement more wisely, also, on target dummy, it actually is higher dps for me as just ignoring FoF, for ME that is].

* After Frostbolt-Flurry-Ice Lance, if no button lights up, Frostbolt into FB-Flurry.

* When spamming Frostbolt between Flurry-CD, use an Ice lance before the buff falls of. 3 seconds before end buff if no FoFx2 , earlier if FoFx2, about 5 seconds.

* Look closely at the CD of Time-Warp, because of the talent that lets me use it more.... yeah, that is a new one, hadn't really thought about that one... oops again. I made sure that CD is more upfront for me.

Weak Aura's for Frost Mage

Now looking at that picture, there is one WA that I don't need anymore in 10.1.5, the Rune of Power one. And I am happy that it ill be gone, it made me a bad raider. The bloody thing gives such a high buff that I needed to be close, and that sometimes conflict with where I should be. So that's where my mind goes into what to do, stay here, take a tick of extra damage, should I help soak... et cetera. Being ankered to a spot, even with a 8 yard leash, is not a good thing, and it made me a worse raider. Glad it will be gone.

Learning how to frost...

 I am not happy... with my DPS.

For the last 10 years I was easy a top 5 player for Innovation. Even though Moonkins sometimes weren't the best for a certain situation, at the end of the raid-night, I knew I had thrown in enough Starsurges and Starfalls to, at least, have some e-peen over my DPS. And now..I am lucky to reach the top 10....

So, how to change that? What is the reason I am struggling? Time to look at Lurge..rr well, Lurger, but I will never get used to that last r.

Lurge about to hit Silvermoons target dummy.
also.. really blizzard, I can hear them scream from Aberrus here?

Lurge actually started getting gear in patch 10.0.7. The island full of rares, and a little bit raiding, gave me some gear to actually not feel that under-geared before patch 10.1 dropped. But, well, then patch 10.1 dropped, and Innovation went to Abberus. I was Ilvl 408 max, and that showed. Even now, 5 weeks on, and just gotten 4 tier set, I only breached Ilvl 420 this Wednesday.

And that is lower as my teammates. Problem here is Mythic+, which I don't do. So for the past month I have been trailing behind on Ilvl. But that should change a little bit next few weeks, when more Heroic gear is coming in, although I still won't be able to upgrade to 5/5.

I could tell you everything about the Balance spec. The ins and outs, what to do how to move. I knew how to find the resources, what you-tubes to watch, and how the talents worked with each other.... but now I am playing a Frost mage. And the rotation guide on wowhead only tells you that much. .

So, I had to find new sources of information, and also, learn a new rotation, and that is something that I am not yet completely good at, especially because, well, a Brainfreeze proc is not a Fingers of Frost proc. I found this on the reddit.

This look simple, but the problem is that it already has 2 different rotations, Milf and Dilf (who came up with those names?) Then there is the silly swapping from rotations at the end of Icy Veins, which is to extend IV I guess, And an added line: use BF-proc in last 5 seconds of IV w/o precast Frostbolt.

Now the main thing about Frost mage rotation is the combi Frostbolt-Flurry-Ice Lance - Il/Fb. That four-spel-combo needs repeating all the time. This will also keep up your icelance and frostbolt buffs normally. Now... what I have been doing last few weeks, was instead of looking at the Brainfreeze proc to cast a 2nd Icelance, was looking at the Fingers of frost proc....  oops.  Now why is that important, because flurried fb/il does a shit ton of dps, and you want that fast.

Now I think I understand what I can do to up the deeps... but..fun fact, that may change soon, because there is a lot of changes coming for Frost on the PTR, including the removal of Rune of Power...hurray.

Time to get cool

So after my last post, I had to do some stuff... like emptying all other servers and just moving everything to Argent Dawn. That also meant some of my characters had to be deleted, like the lower levels mostly. Although on higher warlock at least got the axe, resulting in this:

49 of those are in Innovation, making me 6,6% of innovation at the moment... the last one, Doiral still is the GM of When Elekks Fly, my bank-alt so to say.

It also meant that some characters had to be renamed. My mage is now called Lurger, with an extra r, and there where some more.

Gwaednerth, ye ole Gowqron, became Gowrronn

Luaran, Orc huntress, became Luarain

Ezrila, Undead rouge, became Lariszia

Cloudcaller, Tauren shaman, became Cloudwatch

Gythreuliaid, Bloodelf demon hunter, became Gyrial

Karnhorn, Tuaren death knight, became Karnhoorn

Morshando and Vornik kept their names

But that makes only 9 characters I transferred, well... I also had a Gnome rogue somewhere, Lamars, and he is now Lamarche, bringing transfers up to 10. Al the other Horde characters I had where send to the eternal recycle bin. I did made 8 new Hordies to replace them:

Quiriani is actually already levelling, and Amalaina is doing the Bloodelf starter zones. Tarwhoorn actually did the whole Tauren starter zone before doing what the others already did, the get-the-heartstones-route.

Basically, after the starting zone, either original or new one, or in case of some classes when you log in at level 10, I go Chromie travelling. First I send them to the legion Expansion to quickly pick up a Dalaran Heartstone, this takes no more as 5 minutes, as you can skip the whole introduction.

After that, I send them to Warlords of Draenor. The introduction-quests up till you get the Garrison Heartstone, is probably the best XP/hour you can get in World of Warcraft. As you can see, 4 of my alts are 15, and they all stopped the moment they got their Garrison Heartstone. Cloudrager is a little bit higher, because he is going to stay in Draenor, and did the first few quests to get followers and the Ashran FP.

What leaves, is the Guildchat when I finally decided to put them all in Innovation.

Also... changed the theme and header.

For the Alliance??

• Players who have been enjoying Cross-Faction Instances now have the ability to join the same guild as their opposite-faction friends and benefit from conveniences like shared chat and guild repairs.

....well... that opens up possibilities.

Now, I played a lot for the first month of Dragon flight. But at the beginning of Januar it stopped.... it stopped so hard that I basically didn't touch the game for 2 months orso, missing a whole raid tier it seems. I don't even know why it really happened. 

Rewatching 'The West Wing', all 7 seasons, probably didn't help. And the new Tower game from FeelThere also took up a lot of time, and changing jobs was also thrown in the mix. Add to that that I was not happy that Night Elf Moonkinform most of the times is not working, the buff is there, just not the aesthetics. And that Eclipse is totally ignorable now, but still pops up as a thing to use... well... I guess I needed a break.

This happened all just after I said I would raid as Tsjikin... about 2 weeks ago I played again on Mardah... did the LFR... and then didn't play again for 9 days orso...

So... I think it is time for a Change, I hope it works.

This is Lurge

Undead Frost Mage

Death to the Living!