Now that 4.0.1 has settled

I title this a bit hesitantly because, really, this patch feels far from settled, despite countless server restarts and the fixes put out thus far. From the bug where druid battle-rez + warlock soulstone + shaman self-rez ankh can only be used once (out of all 3) per combat, when that is only supposed to apply to druid battle-rez (once per combat, regardless of individual druid 30minute cooldown availability). Let me squash down my unimaginable rage at the major druid change of destroying permanent-tree-form in exchange for a tree-uber-heal cooldown, despite the awesome threat that druid tanks are currently putting out.

Have I mentioned I was born a feral druid during The Burning Crusade that loves to tank whatever baddies are out there with her bear face? That I loved my awesome insta-threat, hellish mitigation, REAL hybrid “do everything” during raiding back in TBC? Oh, I have. I knew that. Well I’m loving the bear stuff, but it doesn’t outweigh the other druid changes that make me cry if I dwell on my lovely druid. I’m still tanking stuff as I wind down this expansion, still enjoying the game. My druid tank was carried through 4/12 Heroic ICC10 this week, to finish 6 more bosses on regular! And the leather loot gods loved her.

Well, after the saga that was re-installing the game, and the two days it took me to finally download the expansion and the updates and patches, I was glad to get in game and see some of the changes. Many good things, and many bugged-out-the-wazoo issues.

Good: Interface changes with party and raid frames being much less hell, Justice points (stop skipping bosses, puggers, you are making us miss out on justice points!), better stats information panel. Reforging useless junk into useful loot (as a bear tank, arpen MADE ME WANT TO HURT KITTENS) is kickass. Skull bash is the new feral druid spell interrupt/charge and it’s freaking beyond awesome.

Bad: I really don’t like re-learning the classes I’ve played for two years. But there’s more I don’t like.

Glyphs, need more glyphs. We can play with so many, yet there are so few REAL choices. I want glyphs that let me play how I want to play, not that pigeon hole me into a style the developers forced. Speaking of style, wtf healing options are all over the place. The best is reading paladins on twitter cry about wanting their old heal-bomb style back. As a healer, I loved knowing my tank and knowing what to expect from a fight because I could anticipate how to heal. Last minute stressful triage is NOT FUN so someone please tell me why the devs thought moving in that direction would make people WANT to heal. Then they also had to slip a buff to Vengeance in to beef up tank threat.

My video drivers now hates my guts. My favorite addon, Cellular, that manages to give me a tabbed window for every whisper I get makes my game crash when I’m trying to switch toons. (As someone on the same little RP server for going on 3 years with 6 80s and an assortment of little toons I like to hop around on, crashing EVERY TIME is a great way to MAKE ME QUIT THE GAME. ahem)

Things I don’t really like: the new spell queue thing going on. When you hit a button it gets queued, whether the GCD lets you use that ability now or not. That is taking some adjusting from this 50% clicker. :/

All in all, still not sure I’ll be around for Cataclysm. I don’t mind walking way from this. I’m kind of anxious for real life to improve. It just hasn’t yet and this is a pretty inexpensive way to enjoy my time until real life gets “better”. I’ve met amazing people here though from all over the country & world and that I will miss, if I really feel continuing to play won’t be much fun.

Checking myself, for the billionth time, with gear set XYZ

This post inspired by @GeekShui and @phineasdelgado I’m a bit worried, Phineas seemed a bit revved up to come to blows over what I may say!

Filed under: addicted, awesome, bears, general, rant, screenshot, warcraft

The ultimate Boss fight

Matticus, of World of Matticus, PlusHeal, nostockui and wow.com fame, shared his dream from the other night with his followers on twitter. It led to much hilarity. I was quite amused that every time my twitter warcraft feed updated, there were yet more phases/scary things added to it. Here I’ll share the gradual progression of this epic encounter, and hopefully you’ll get a chuckle at least out of it.

The best part is the representation of it in image form at the end.

@matticus Dreamed of the hardest boss fight. Defile. Doomfire. Has 2 fire elementals that must be tanked in a tangent. Must pass cores. And 360°cleave

@tinkerpriest add in disease spreading and passing polarities

@Technophobia And you have to sit through a 10-minute RP intro and not AFK.

@MoodyDK And top it off with a Safety Dance.

@tinkerpriest add mind control, taunt immunity, and lava walls on heroic

@GamerGaz you forgot the crosshealing adds

@tinkerpriest And Leeching Swarm.

@tinkerpriest ….now it needs to grip 3 people for 110% of hp over 10sec, can’t heal targets directly.

@_Rades Also inbetween phases you have to dance across a floor that spews acid in horrible yet oddly predictable patterns.

@Thiefd Air Phase please?

@Technophobia 5min hard enrage, IMO.

@borskzj What about resist stacking?

@matticus Said boss must also include healing, dps, and tanking beams that must be blocked. Also drops random infernals. Has to be tanked by a mage.

@matticus I think thats what, 8 phases?

@Jezriya phase 9 is all the even numbered phases at once. phase 10 is all the odd ones.

@Kenichan How bout a knockback which throws off the top aggroer where 2nd & 3rd tank has to pickup?

@Loupyn must pass cores to remove stacking debuff on raid member, only 3 per fight and desolves if held >30s or <15s ?

@tinkerpriest 9 minute berserk timer, rebuffs on raid heal boss, stacking debuff (uncleanseable) on tanks that blows them up when it reaches 12.

@krizzlybear hardmode is activated when you heal an imprisoned NPC to 100%.

@pikestaff do we have a positive and a negative side yet?

@krizzlybear the trick is you have to pair up each + with an -, instead of stacking all the similar signs together.

@MoodyDK Four sides. Up, down, charm, strange.

@tinkerpriest achievement: claw cracker: burn each pincer within 10 sec of the other without losing anyone to Pinched.

@_Rades But each time you pair up, it has to be with a different person than the last time.

@tinkerpriest different race, get 45 sec debuff similar to argent tourney ones.

@pikestaff also, two words: Flame Wreath

@tinkerpriest do not move when flame wreath is cast or the raid blows up…

@Eforextinction Also, if it kills a player, it gains a new ability depending on the class of the player.

@_Rades Also the outside of the room is lined with eggs that will hatch & spawn whelps.

@tinkerpriest even better, the boss randomly decides 5 of these to use each lockout.

@krizhek so do we have a phase with cubes to click before he cast a instadeath spell?

@blackbell don’t forget void zones!

@pikestaff boss quote when he kills a player: “to the GROUND, baby!”

@tinkerpriest leeching debuff on any player more than 10 yds out, gas debuff that spreads to players within 7 yds.

@Technophobia And it should be called The Ultimate Raid Boss Of Ultimate Destiny.

@_Rades Rumored to drop the server-unique Pony mount but this has never been confirmed.

@MoodyDK Vehicle phases?

@matticus On phase 11, boss deathgrips everyone to middle, then casts arcane explosion. Flame Wreath. Blizzard. And Thorim like Lightning charge

@tinkerpriest final phase drops 3 legendary crackers and allows ranged to drop molten liquids to slow/snare.

@_Rades The molten only slows the crab adds (cradds?) though, as we know the big Crab is immune to flaming.

@Mcconniff MATT!!! Wake up you’re killing us!!!!!

@chanze and must have rays spitting venom covering the floor and the air phase from KT, and Annihilation

@MoodyDK I hope when GC puts this in he credits us. Then again, maybe I don’t.

@matticus the only bad thing about the encounter is that it will be solo’d by a rogue in 6 months

Achievement/Title for beating this boss?

Crab Slayer and The Deadliest Catch.

Filed under: awesome, blog, Blogroll, epic, general, progression, raid, raiding, warcraft, azeroth, boss, ghostcrawler, raid, twitter, twitteroth, warcraft

Do Healers Have A Bad Attitude? (via Falling Leaves and Wings)

I think there is some solid points in this post. I find it exceptionally interesting that this comes on the heals of similar sounding posts at Pugnacious Priest and Spinksville.

This past weekend I made the decision that I was going to finally follow through with leveling an Alliance character through the WotLK quests. I usually do try to see the “other” side of each expansion to see how things are different. Having transferred almost all of my alliance characters over to the horde (FOR THE HORDE!), rather than transferring one of them back I opted to resurrect a character that hasn’t been played since Vanilla. My level … Read More

via Falling Leaves and Wings

Filed under: awesome, blog, Blogroll, healing, heals, pug, rant, tank, tanking, warcraft, wow, blog, heals, pug, reblog

Rock beats healer

This weekend I relaxed and didn’t run myself ragged through raids. This led to discovering that, lo and behold, Maraudon can indeed be fun!

Sunday I logged onto warcraft (having partied plenty on Saturday in honor of Green Beer everywhere) and tossed a coin to see if I did my first random as a lowbie 50 mage or chained through my heroic random grind. Me and my level buddy’s 50 warrior decided it would be lowbies. And little did I know, Greg had been preparing himself to tank. (He finally managed to find a decent shield).

The 30minute wait I expected became insta-group. At 9am server that’s pretty awesome.

The first run was painful. I barely remember BlackRock Depths. Greg, the tank, didn’t know squat about it. All he knew was the first molten fire boss might drop some loot suitable for him. Well, we wiped a bunch getting there, but the trash also dropped a world drop boe epic shield for him. I squealed on vent.

After that disaster of a run (which wasn’t too bad, but was a bit painful at the beginning) the disc priest, my mage and Greg’s tank tried again. We landed with an awesome shaman and paladin. And the fun never ended. We hit Maraudon-Fall of Princess, of all places, twice, and found ourselves back in Sunken Temple three times. The 2nd time through Maraudon, I took them all on a tour up to kill Celebros and the Demon boss, along with a few rares (did I mention my first Nightelf levelled completely in Kalimdor? I cleared Desolace of quests twice) .

All of us were pretty impressed with ourselves. It seemed nothing could kill us. Enhancement shaman, Ret pally, Warrior tank and Disc priest really don’t scream “aoe things to death”. Me? Oh, I just blizzard a lot… Until the priest decided 2 giant behemoths on the way to the Princess weren’t enough, and demanded we pull all of them.

Filed under: awesome, pug, screenshot