Warband

 

The winter of 23-24

 Two 2-week vacations have passed since last time. And stuff has happened. Looking at last post, some things have changed in SoD, but most things stayed the same for me in Retail.

In retail, HC was cleared while I was on vacation, and I got my AotC rather easily at the start of Januari. But, all the other things in retail I have not done, I actually picked up the Gilneas quest-line a few weeks ago, and still haven't done it.

<Innovation> clears BFD-Raid

Most of my time was spend in Season of Discovery, and looking at last post, some surprises happened. First of all, my first lvl25 char was the Paladin... but my main character became Mardah, the Night Elf Rogue. Yes I am playing a melee-character again, with combo-points even.

The SoD-Innovation guild did a lot of raids, we cleared Gnomeregan and Blackfathom Deeps multiple times. Now some strange things did happen...

First of all, I found myself being the Guildmaster of SoD-Innovation. This was basically because I was the only one from Retail-Innovation playing SoD, so I was basically the custodian of the name. Not that it was difficult being a GM for about 14 classic raiders from the same classic Guild <The Conspiracy>, which I had been part of around the classic-TBC time.  So basically it was a non-commitment to me. 

Mardah doing some Rogue-Tanking on Thermaplugg

..and then Phase 3 happened.

The up-scaling to 20-man was happening, and with that, in the future also probably 40 man raids. And with the fact that 2 of our raiders stopped, or were not planning continuing. Well, I wrote a post on the Retail-Innovation discord, and one on the Lava-Lash discord, hoping to find more raiders, I got one reply, from the GM of <Wonder>, which resulted in:

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