Trial of the Champion

ToC as a Tree

Boss 1 - The three stoo..rrr..champions.

You start the encounter om a horse, jousting away. Not that hard, if your horse dies, get a new one. But now comes the catch, if all three champions are down at the same time, everybody will dismount to start an 'old-school' encounter. But...there's a 75% chance you will die after dismounting. Because the three bosses are probably spread out, it takes some time for the tank to pick them up, throw ONE heal, and you get aggro from something that WTF-pwns you. Hope you get a paladin who throws a BoP.

The healing is very heavy at the beginning, sometimes poisons are being thrown around, so just go all out, let Rejuv tick on everyone, use Wild Growth continuously, and nourish/swiftmend the tank. when one of the bosses is down, you can relax a little.

Boss 2 - Either a Pally, or a Priest

The Pally-Not that hard, mostly normal tank healing. He will stun (hammer of Justice) and damage (Hammer of Wrath) one party-member sometimes. But that can be easily healed up, mmm, HoJ is magic, maybe a pally can cleanse it. The other ability is an AoE-blast which will take everyone down to around 40% health.. if they are looking at the boss... your character for that matter, so you can turn the camera around, as long as your toons back is to the boss (tanks should run through them). Be prepared that some PuGger won't turn around (loose of their Imba-DPS), so be ready to throw a nourish.

The Priest-Ok, the priest does VERY LOW melee-dps, I read somewhere she can be tanked by an enhancement-shammie. She does however throw a lot of Smites to random members. So very easily healing, if she is alone. She however summons a past Nightmare (Hogger/Prince/Onyxia and more) which makes the figh more interesting. The add should be tanked/killed as soon as possible. Why? Because he does an AoE-fear.. so keep rejuv/Wild Growth ticking on everyone, because he sometimes forgets the tank. If he is down... time to relax...

Boss 3 - The Black Knight

Hey didn't we.. oh well. I'LL BITE YER LEGS OFF (sorry :p). This encounter has three phases, in which you need to heal differently. In the first phase, he's a wimp. A Rejuv for the Tank, and a Wild Growth for some minor AoE damage is all you need. There will be an add jumping around, so a rejuv on yourself could come in handy.

Second phase is different. He know has about 10 adds, so hug the tank so his AoE-threat will keep the little buggers of you. There's a lot of AoE in this phase, but not that much direct-tank damage. So Wild Growth/Tranq will help you, together with a Barkskin for healing-aggro in the beginning. But... don't stay to close to the tank for long. The Black Knight will explode his adds, doing a lot of damage, and probably one-shot you. Don't worry if one or two adds will follow you away from the tank, even if they explodem it's survivable.

The third phase has no adds, just a Black Knight hitting very hard, so focus on Tank.

Gratz with you 3 Conquerer-emblems, 3 Champion Seals and some Tier8-gear (Ilvl219) if you did this on heroic, else gratz on the Tier7-gear (Ilvl200) (and maybe some PvP-emblems). Only difference between the two difficulties is that the bosses hit harder on heroic.

Oh, and if you are dead.. run back. Graveyard is very close, and you can run in... any dps begging for a Brez should be laughed at. Typing the sentence and finding the time to cast it, takes longer then running back.

of The Exodar

Well, Mardah got rep-crazy, went to Auberdine to do a lot of darnassus-rep quests, and to Exodar and surroundings for those. She now is 'of Darnassus' and 'of the Exodar', and riding a green elephant :p. Next up is Gnomer, for which I'll do the dailies for 10 days, so she will be exalted with them through the dailies, and then I can instantly become 'of Stormwind' because Mardah is already exalted with those.

I did the new dungeon, Trial of the Champion (ToC, not CoT :p) several times now. It drops purplez :p, and I did get some nice new gear from it...but... can we please speed up the dialogue, it's getting boring. I also logged into Gowron last night, after dps-ing and healing it, I wanted to tank it...man, am I rusty with tanking. Well, no wipe thanks to the healer I guess.

I also did the dailies, and am now 4/25 for the Triump-idol, the other stuff from that is just to expensive to actually look forward to, unless I start raiding...which is not my plan at the moment. I am saving for the T8-pieces with the conquests-stuff, but it's hard to find a group for non-ToC now :(

I purchased the wintergrasp-heirloom-leather-shoulders, and smacked them on a new character of mine, Mariandel Enhanvement Shaman :p. Drop Strength of Earth, cast a shock, drop Fire-totem, hack away... Well, in 6 levels she'll get a hors...rrr..elephant, so I suppose the questing will be a lot faster...

Ezrila, now 71, can fly in Northrend...mmm making questing a lot faster, because normal flying now has a speed of 150%, no more slowpoke :p. So, I have been busy, but with Mardah almost BiS pre-raiding, it would be logicical to start up a new alt...

Oh well, one more week of vacation, and then students need teaching again... and to make it funnier, I will then teach students, and be teached at the same time... Bachelor in Education...

Faster

And there it is, at least, tomorrow there it is :p I read through the patch notes, and here are some changes.

-New Druid Bear and Cat forms...
Where are the Moonkin/Tree-forms???

-All Dungeons except the new raid-dungeons will now drop Emblems of Conquest.
Nice, Mardah just has 1 Heroism left, and tomorrow she can start to get those EoC for T8-equivalent loot. I also suspect that there will be a lot of groups be forming... and that the time to enter dungeons will be BAD.

-Daily Heroic Dungeon Quest will reward 2 Emblems of Triumph.
Well, 2/day for running a dungeon... that'll take a while.

-Rogues can use axes.
TBH, can't there be a quest-line when you reach, say exalted with a faction, to learn a new weapon-skill? Or would that be to much homogenization.

-Mount at lvl20, Epic Mount at 40, Flying at 60 (150%, not 60%), Heirloom Northrend Flying and rep-reducing cost for epic flying.
All Nice, only thing is, the rep-reducement is from the OL/Northrend main faction. Anyone Exalted with Thrallmar??? Well, time to unequip the tabard in dungeons.

-Replenishment now replenishes 1% mana
Nice, more mana-regen...like Mardah ever gets oom.

-Wolvar and Gorloc orphans have arrived in Dalaran and need your help!
mmm, SO? Wolvar?? Gorlac?? I wonder who orphaned them.... :p

Oh well, and a lot more. At least now I look a little bit more forward to levelling a shammie. Wolf-form at 16, riding at 20. That will save a lot of time. And Ezrila will get the heirloom at 70. And no more slowpoke whit normal flying.

IT IS ALL GOING FASTER

80...part III

And friday, it happened again. Mardah was rescuing some crusaders from the Scourge in Icecrown when she got her final experience to reach 80. So I learned some new spells, and put myself in the LFG for some easy Heroics, Violet Hold, Halls of Stone.

I got invited to a party to VH. Well, that was some harder healing then I was used to :p. We got defenseless and the party continued towards Drak'Tharon Keep. That was a little easier to heal, and we got the Oh Novos!-achievement. Then they wanted to go to Halls of Lightning... ouch.

Well, I did my best, and everyone knew how long I was 80 (having a achievement-pop-up saying you got your first amblem :p). But nonetheless, they thought I did some 'sick' healing and where ready to go with me. Now HoL is, together with the Occulus, one of the hardest Heroics in my memory. But it seemed to go well, we even got Shatter Resistant. But then came Loken.

I did everything right..no problem on the healing.. except, well, my Health was barely 13k, so I was death after the first Loken-Nova. Second try we all run different ways.. no good. Third try, I survived the first Boom, but the second was to much. But with full HoT's ticking on the party, they downed him.. within 2 minutes. Another achievement :p

Sunday-morning I spend some gold to level Leatherworking a little bit more, so I could make the 2 purple recipes, and I got a nice ring from somewhere, more suited for boomkins, but better then I had for resto. So the race is on for more Epics :p

And, of course, the moment I hit 77, I was in Storm Peaks, so again hunting for Sons of Hodir... which is easier now that you can use those relics of ulduar to gain rep. Oh, and I got the dragon from the Culling of Stratholme.. lol, I am a druid, why do I need that :p

I also encountered some bad tanks.. but my pocket-tank :p is 77 now... almost there.

Defense Cap

I always said, there is no defense-cap... well actually there is.

When your total dodge+parry+miss=102.4% you have reached the usefull defense-cap.

This thread on Maintankadin (here) delves into this further completely useless information.

Unbuffed Defense-cap is 7491 defense-rating = 1532 defense skill
Raid-buffed cap is 7083 defense-rating = 1440 defense skill

So next time someone asks me if I am defense-capped, I just say that I am...what??? 900 short??

Almost there

Well, Mardah reached 75 today. And the last few days I found out that if you have some more blues :p, healing is not that hard as the first few times. And it also helps if your tank is almost uncrittable, and the rest of the DPS is not hitting something else.

Mots of the time it's just Rejuv-spam and Wild Growth if the whole party gets damage. Mardah got the achievement for the quests in Tundra, did some quests in Dragonblight, some in Grizzly Hills, and is now back with the Kalu'Ak to get some mor reputation. Rewards from those are available at 76. After that it is probably Wyrmrest-Time :p

I am still looking for a non-elitist-jerk blog to read about trees and chickens. It seems Phaelia has not been replaced yet, or I am missing something, most of the blogs I know are written by and for Paladins :p

Talking about pallies... the new Vindication will be Mandatory in 3.2 imho. But more on that in a later blog.

Worgen and Goblins?

Datamined from the PTR, new Worgen and Goblin Masks, and speculation starts if the are the new races in patch 4.0.

Goblins are, like World of Matticus said, Ferengi. They work for both sides to make the most money. It would be interesting to see which classes they would get. Warriors, for sure I guess, mages, rogues, priests, warlocks and hunters are also conceivable. But do you see a Goblin Paladin or Shaman, or a Goblin Druid, probably not.

Worgen from Gilneas (look that up on wowwiki), not alligned with the Alliance, or the Horde for that matter. Classes would be warrior again I guess, and they are close to nature so maybe shamans? No paladins for sure, and hunters... meh, wolfs taming wolfs, seems unlikely. Mages and rogues could be an option, but warlocks... maybe.. oh... and Druids of course.

They are called Worgen, not werewolves, and even then, a lot of literature already is mentioning just weres, humans able to shapeshift in different forms... so, a worgen Druid would not be that farfetched, and again the nature theme ofcourse.

Also the fact that both races are not-alligned gives the speculation that they start as neutral, and that later on, at level 20 I guess, you could choose your faction, either Horde or Alliance... now that will be interesting.

But speculation is still speculation.... but alas, that's also a part of World of Warcraft

So,

Goblin Warriors, Rogues, Mages, Hunters, Priests
Worgen Warriors, Druids, Shamans, Warlocks, Mages/Rogues

...oh, and Death Knights of course... /sigh