Cataclysm End

Last raiding day of the year,

and we got it down,

on twenty-five.

Cataclysm ends now,

next up..well..

Theramore

So, in a few weeks the Horde will unleash their warriors on the city of the sea-nation Theramore, thereby destroying the city and making a certain mage very angry.

I still remember the first time I was in Theramore. It was on my first character, a dwarf hunter, and he had a quest to go to somewhere else. Mind you, I had only seen the dwarf-route, and I may have visited Stormwind with the Tram. And now I had this quest that wanted me to go to Ashenvale?  Where was that. Luckily I already found out that there was a boat from Menethil to a place called Theramore on the other side of the ocean.

Of course, my level 20-something hunter died horrible in the marshes trying to get to the barrens, but well... it was exploring.

I always found Theramore a little strange, as in, why not do more with it. They have a huge dock...but only one boat goes there. A city with a lot of terrain..  where is the Theramore auction house?  I did find a banker...  but no idea if he has been there all the time.

For those of you who haven't been there lately...  Theramore now has a second gate, which is the start of a very straight road through the marsh connecting some old quest-hubs neatily to each other.

Just over the bridge, I spotted something new, of things to come. And it was not easily missed, with the whole beam shining down.  This lady, one of the Dragonkin, is mostly known for doing the most useless thing in Dalaran. During Wrath and Cata, she stood in the Tower, and if you talked to her, she teleported you to the Caverns of Time...   which was really needed...especially because she was standing right in front of a portal with the same function.  But now she is in Theramore.....  what will her function be there?

Theramore it self is a little questhub...  not many though. There is some struggle with deserters, and there was a questline concerning King Wrynn...which is now ended abruptly.  Alliance however did get a questline where they met up with a legendary man...  Nat Pagle.

Now...  back then  (:p), till patch 2.3 orso, Nat Pagle was the one who could learn you how to fish above skill 225 (iirc).  No problem..if you played Alliance. Now if you where playing Horde, which I did when I reached that level of fishing, you had no idea where he was....  and you had to fight your way through the Marsh to get there.  But alas, here he is...  doing his part in defending Theramore against the creatures of old.

Alas, Theramore will fall...  (which is actually interesting, because it is now actually deep into Alliance territory, instead of being out on the edge...)  So long,  and lets see how it looks in a couple of weeks  (The Fall of Theramore starts 18 september or something like that)

...and on a different note....  Innovation finally managed to grasp the tentacles and took down Zonnoz, making us a 25man guild with 6/8 heroic..  and I am 2 or 3 bosses away from flying a dragon above Stormwind....

Time to prepare...

One week till patch 5.0, a month till new expansion...  I am not prepared.

I do have a notion of how to spec....  but not yet sure about rotations. And where to put all those new spells?  Maybe time to redo my UI? I have been playing with this UI for 2 years now.

I should probably find some stuff about reputations, and which I should work on first, you now, the regular things you do before an expansion, but well...  I have been a little distracted the last few weeks..  well a little, call it a lot, something to do with falling in love and stuff.

And for those who don't know, well, she is sort of on the picture below  :p.  Being not in my own country, but with my laptop, we signed up for sunday's raid. Innovation was on Ultraxion-heroic.  And I promptly died the first try because of lag, and some 'how-did-this-al-go-again?'-confusion. Some lag-wipe later, we downed him, and went on to Blackhorn.

Now, Blackhorn was not beaten yet on heroic, but apparantly in our vacation they did try it. So, just having a bad Ultraxion-experience, our fearless leader Eva said: 'We'll give Blackhorn Heroic one try, so everyone experiences what is going on, and then move on to normal.'

...well...  apparantly one try was all we needed, going 5/8 Heroic now.

On another note, some guildmembers of mine have posted a sort-of what-did-I-do-in-WoW on our guildpage, maybe I should do that...although I may have to spend three posts about it  :p

Mardah, Blessed Defender of Nordrassil

So...  after the trainingsession, we took 3 or 4 pokes at Heroic Morchok before he fell down, and nobody took a screenie  :(, which is probably a little hard, because, and I quote our GM, one was in Stormwind and the other in Ironforge....

But, I actually wanted to tell you another story.... about my road to a legendary...which probably completes around patch 5.2 orso.

Be warned, spoilers ahead.

I am telling this by pictures...yada yada, says more then a thousand words, yada..badoom..

Here we are killing of Volcanus, so I can get my branch of Nordrassil. As you can, maybe, see through al the clutter, I am a big Treant with lots of aggro. Yes, tanking boss in tree-form, how cool is that. I still miss the ol' Tree-form, so this was very nice.

Also, you can see my UI nicely, although I have no idea why Healbot is active, normally it is not. I have enough information flying around already.

After you have gotten the branch, you get a 2 hour title, and flowers at your feet, damn hippy-trees.... oh, and see that hatchling, it dances the moonkindance when you target it with /dance, very funny.

After flying to the Amber Ledge to talk to Kalecgos, which by the way, I had to find out on the interwebs, because the quest-text was not that clear, Tarecgosa transported me towards the Nexus. Some story about her being the prime-candidate to follow up Maelcgos, who we killed ages ago it seems. But.....

...she had to be captured. With me lying besides her in the snow, luckily Kalecgos showed up to safe me and infuse me with the essence of the now-almost-dead Tarecgosa, and he asked me to find 1000 cinders in the Firelands...great....

And after those 1000 cinders, I have to collect more stuff, so, probably 15 more clears of FL needed I guess....  well... at least I am exalted with the Avengers of Hyjal now.

Laters

Training-camp?

What's this, what are those people doing in the Hills of Feralas?

Some of us went on a secret mission, to prepare for Heroics.... apparantly, Moonkins are good stomp-soakers...

Mardah, Destroyer's End

Two pulls it took sunday, two pulls after 5 wipes last tuesday....  and the first time we got past platform 4... and we did it, we cleared Dragon Soul pre-nerf, surprising our GuildLeader who was expecting some evening full of wipes....

What remains are the pictures.....

.   

But (apart from T7 which was EZ-mode mostly) this is the first time I cleared a raiding-tier before it ended, or it was nerfed.....  Ok it is on normal, but that's what we were aiming for. Time for Heroic DS.... I don't know, we'll see...

I am just a very happy Tsjikin now.

Random thoughts before the raid....

So, It's now raid-start-time, and I have no idea If I am going to be picked. I know we killed 'lower' DragonSoul last Thursday because I was there, so Ultraxion is next.

Before me I see some of my guildies (I am sitting on the keg). One of our druid-healers (kris), and our DK-tank Morrie. Cisse is sitting besides me, both in flight form btw.

Our OP-almost legendary-wearing-dragonrogue is swearing at our forums, probably they ate his post. And we are al just waiting for the pickups. Calendar shows 15 sign-ins.... blaagh, so no 25...again,we could really use some extra people (hint, hint).

Ah, some people seem to be in DS now, with 17 people online....  still waiting to see what happens. Although normally speaking, I was there last thursday, so I probably be...ooh..invite, last one in it seems.

So, time to get my pre-raid-black coffee, and get my zen-thing going to start, laters  :)

Innovation : LFM

So... my guild Innovation has a little problem, which is summed up by SWTOR or Skyrim or UFO, or something....  not enough people sign up anymore :(

That means we usually have around 17 people signing in for our 25's.... which of course is not enough.

So, if you are a healer (preferably not a druid), or a ranged DPS (again, preferably not a druid), and you like some less-hardcore, more relaxed raiding focused on 25-normal... well...

visit:  the Innovation Web Site

And to give some idea's what we have been doing lately with some 10man normals:

After 17 wipes, on the last pull of 2011

..and after the first raidweek in 2012 (only 3 wipes to our surprise).

Some things to consider. We may accept more druids, but alas, we have a lot of them.... same goes a little bit for Melee and Tanks, although a Tankadin (the irony, considering my past  :p) may be considered.

Oh, and somewhere in the vacation-weeks, we did a little raid to Firelands, and one-shotted Staghelm Heroic??? No idea how that happened though....  too much christmas-stuffing probably...

Happy 2012

Happy new year everyone....

To many ideas in my head, I probably should just hit publish on some of them.

Things running around:

1. Tell something about my luck in LFR's considering gear...NOT
2. Make a non-WoW-related post about Twillight Imperium
3. I am playing Orcs & Humans atm   :)
4. Tell something about Innovation...
   - Last pull of 2011 (number 18), and Blackhorn down.
   - Second (?) Boss-pull of 2012, Staghelm-Heroic down.
   - Innovation is looking for ranged DPS (non-druid), because skyrim/swtor has claimed a lot of people, and we have problems getting 25 together  :(


laters...

It's coming....

Of course, within 24 hours of my 'what is coming post', the information is starting to leak :P

First up was Ghostcrawler with the threat-change (which is already live). At first I was sceptical about this, more stuff to make it easier on dps, now they don't even have to watch their threat. But then I thought of the amount of times I was threat-capped in heroics, because I overgeared the tank that much, that my third thick from Moonfire almost pulled aggro of him.

This change makes it easier for tanks to hold aggro, and not get that 'what-did-I-do-wrong'-feeling. It may even be more effective then the extra rewards for tanks, because they can hold aggro, and not get blamed by the overzealous dps for losing it.

Then there was an interview on a german site, mmo-champion has the translation. First surprising news for me was that patch 4.3 will bring Deathwing. So, unless they do a Sunwell on us, that will be the last patch, and patch 5.0 should come a lot earlier then late 2012 then, probably in the summer?

There was some talk about an Abyssal Maw-raid, but that's been cancelled. Now, I don't know when it was cancelled, but probably some work was done to it. I also would like to know how long it takes to make an expansion. Both TBC and Wrath lasted for almost two years. I suppose 4.3 will come out around december, just like the ICC-patch did in wrath. So normally speaking, patch 5.0 should be out in the summer. If Cata is also going to last almost two years, prepare for another ICC-summer, where alts will be flying around.

Patch 4.3 will also include three new dungeons, including one in Caverns of Time, and they shouldn't be revamps. I wonder, will they require Ilvl352 orso to enter? Just like the Troll-heroics have a higher entry-gear-level?

And there was some news on the ethereals. The Transmogrifier will let you change your gear-appearance. Now, I don't know about this one. Will it be a complete rainbow in raids? And the news about the Void Storage can maybe be included in this one, a place to store absolute gear. So, you can transmogrify your gear to your voidstoraged gear?

Personally, I don't see the need for the voidstorage, but that's because I already deleted so much gear in the past.... If this would have come earlier, Gowron could actually have used it. Mardah is completely different, because I only started playing her at the beginning of cata, she doesn't have much gear... well, she does have the Druids of the Fang-set :p

...waiting for more news...

What is coming?

I don't think I have been in this position before, the utter lack of information of stuff to come. In all the time I have this blog running, I always had some info what was coming in the next patch/expansion, but it seems there is so little information out there, that I just have to sit back... and relax.

What do we now know about the future?

Mists of Pandaria
Ok, we do now the name of patch 5.0. There are two camps it seems. One hoping for a Pandarian-race, and one expecting a Hero-class healer, like the Death Knight was in Wrath (Monk anyone?). My money is on the hero-class for two reasons. First, we already had two new races in Cata, and second, who to give the pandas, alliance or horde??? One will feel shafted. Of course, with the screenshot-guys, the other new race could be ethereal....

The screenshot-guys
Look it up, it has 3 Ethereals standing in what appears to be a house in Stormwind. The most interesting of the three is the 'Void Storage', will this be an inter-realm-Bind-on-account-bank?

Patch 4.3
Blizzards stated that there will be a new dungeon and a new raid, but to where, no idea. This one is most surprising, normally we have a lot of information about what is coming in the next patch, but not now.

Patch 4.last
We kill Deathwing. Being the poster-child of this expansion, we know we are going to kill him sometime... soon®.

That's it, 4 little pieces of information... t-t-t-that's all folks.

Going into Firelands: Shannox

And there is the wall again.

After two weeks farming trash, pulling some bosses just to see them (spider and steering giant). And also clearing BoT and BWD to get some more gear for people, last night we had our first real Firelands-Raid. Target:Shannox.

At the end of the night, some conclusions where made. First: we where making progress, but Second: to low dps from the raid, so we went over the 10-minutes mark.....ouch.

At the end someone threw the number of 23k dps average around, which made me and Gunho go into a little theorycrafting. First that number 23k is unreachable at the moment. At our last attempt, I think I made almost no mistake. Focusing on Rageface till second spear, then dotting all three up, with almost all the spells cast at the right time. I may get 500dps more if it was earlier on the evening (hey, I am human after all), but that would be it. I had 15.8k dps, and was the highest of the raid, with Gunho following closely, and 3/4 others also around that 15-16k dps-range.

But that 23k is way to high. I took my calculator, and came to a raid-average of 17k with 15 dps, and the 3 tanks doing 15k. Well, that number is reachable methinks. This week some people will probably get 2pT12 (not me though), and than 18k is doable. Problem is, 18k is the average.... and we still have some people with to low gear, because of some new recruits.

But, there are some problems we face now. The most important is players getting Iceblocked. On our last attempt, I turned around to DoT Shannox, and saw three, yes THREE iceblocks, that weren't there 5 seconds before. I don't know the exact hp of the blocks, but they will probably cost you 500dps-average methinks. So getting out of these traps should be a high priority, forget everything, run out of them.

And then there are the times Rageface jumps into an Icetrap, RNG happens. I saw that that Iceblock was also targeted for destruction. It shouldn't. He will get out of it, and all dps on that iceblock is wasted. Everyone should ignore rageface for those 5 seconds, and hit Shannox probably.

And third, the Immolation-traps. Now, let's be clear, I myself am not familiar enough yet to keep the two traps from each other, although I am almost there :p. But if Rageface is alive, he should be immolated as often as possible. First of, he will be damaged by them, which helps the raid-dps. But most importantly, immolation will place a 9-second debuff on the hound, which increase damage taken by 40% (iirc). That will help A LOT. It will potentially lower the dps-average needed by around 1.5k.

With all this in mind, I actually think that he is almost beatable at this moment, it requires no mistakes though, and a high uptime of immolation on the dogs.

And for the record. My average Ilvl at the moment is 360, Innovation hasn't done any heroics, so most people will be around that now. Also raid-dps-average goes 1k up/down with the amount of dps present, so 14dps should bring 18k, and 16dps should bring 16k, and this is with a little safety-factor build in.

Mathemathics:
Rageface:33.7M hp + Riplimb:33.7M hp + Shannox:81.6M hp = 159M hp
159M hp / 600 seconds = 265k dps
265k dps - 15k dps (tanks) = 250k dps
250k dps / 15 dps-players = 17k dps-average (rounded up)

TL;DR-version:
1. Get out of the Ice-Traps
2. Don't target the Iceblock containing Rageface/Riplimb, hit Shannox.
3. Immolate Rageface whenever possible.
4. Bring 17k dps on average. (with 15 dps-players that is)