My name is Neytiri, a level 85 Night Elf, Hunter. I have been raiding since The Burning Crusade expansion and it is what I truly enjoy about this game.
Well here we go! Dragon Soul, the newest raid instance. It has 8 different boss encounters, each one we hope will be more challenging than the next.
Now that we have brought Ragnaros down, we finally get to put an end to Deathwing and his last set of minions. The patch came out on Tuesday, Nov. 29th, (just in case you have been hiding under a rock lately).
Unfortunately I was unable to raid with my guild Fatal on Tuesday night due to RL stuff. But, they were able to kill the first 3 bosses Morchok, Yor’sahj the Unsleeping and Warlord Zon’ozz. Wednesday night we were able to easily kill Hagara the Stormbinder on our 2nd attempt and I won these boots woot woot!
The next boss we attempted was Ultraxion. Now he turned out to be a bit more difficult for us, because people can’t push this new button that appears on our screens. My next post I will post a screenshot of it so you will know what I am talking about. Anyways here is the lastest video from Blizzard on patch 4.3 called the Hour of Twilight.
Well there is a new patch coming out soon, it is already on the PTR. I found this on MMO-Champion.
I was happy to see this because there are times when I would like to raid with my friends who are on other realms. Sadly this isn’t going to apply to Dragon Soul.
We previously introduced the ability to form cross-realm parties with Real ID friends, and now with Patch 4.3.2, we’re adding the ability for players to use that same functionality to form raids to run older normal or heroic raids, or participate in Battlegrounds!
This will allow you to join up with your Real ID friendsfrom other realms and:
Form a cross-realm raid and use Raid Finder
Jump in to any classic dungeon or raid and be automatically placed in the same instance
Join forces and dominate the Battlegrounds
Please note, you will not yet be able to run normal or Heroic Dragon Soul with cross-realm Real ID raids.
Classes: General
Vengeance is no longer triggered by receiving damage from other players.
Druid
The Tier 13 Balance Druid 4-piece bonus now also increases the damage of Starsurge by 10%, in addition to its current effect.
Hunter
Aspect of the Hawk now grants roughly 35% more attack power.
Deterrence now also reduces damage taken by 30% while active.
Black Arrow now ticks every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, as opposed to every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. The total damage dealt by the ability is unchanged.
Lock and Load no longer benefits Arcane Shot, nor is it consumed by Arcane Shot.
Mage
Fireball damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
Pyroblast damage has been reduced by roughly 6%.
Paladin
Holy Radiance now costs 40% of base mana, up from 35%.
Priest
Mass Dispel should again prefer dispelling targets that have magic effects that can be dispelled.
Here is a post from a friend of mine, a former Wow player and his opinion on Wow vs SWTOR.
Neytiri
So, what is the big differences between these two games? The story and the way it is presented, SWTOR has WoW beat hands down. The fact that most quests have a cinematic scene along with dialogue choices depending if it is the light or dark side. It is pretty cool being able to kill said person or let them live and see a trail. WoW does have a better UI only because the ability to use add ons, Bioware says in time they most likely will allow them. I think once Bioware allows them SWTOR will have the advantage over WoW. Crafting is so much easier in SWTOR because you do not have to spend countless hours in front of a anvil making the same item over and over again. In SWTOR you send one of your many companions out to do your bidding. I currently am lvl 47 and I have six companions and four can be deployed on crafting missions. Which means I can have one with me while questing and than constantly have four out making my things and gathering crafting materials, no down time what so ever.
WoW I would say right now has better PvP system with arena and rated battlegrounds. Also Blizzard has had seven years to fine tune that system which they have no doubt done. SWTOR system is a little buggy and didn’t really change much in the PvP game. I will say Huttball is a capture the flag with a twist and could have a lot of potential if Bioware handles it correctly. I will say SWTOR does have WoW beat on the world PvP scale with planets dedicated to nothing but world PvP, as of now there is Ilum, with more planned on being added in upcoming patches.
Overall, I have to say SWTOR is a better game, mainly because it is new and someting different. It did take a lot of what WoW did and just made it better. The flow of leveling does not really feel like a grind because the story sucks you in so bad. I do not think this game will be the “WoW Killer” people claim it to be. I do think it will help chip away at Blizzards subs. The only thing that will kill WoW is PANDAS!!!! So come on over to SWTOR kill some jedis or siths and engulf yourself in the best MMO on the market right now. Also check out my SWTOR blog at http://swtorhealer.wordpress.com/,
Have you ever wondered what is it about raiding that keeps you coming back night after night, week after week? We spend months progressing, then farming those bosses for their epic loots. You would think we would get bored of it.
So, what is it that keeps us going back? What is it that you do not like about raiding, but yet not so bad that it makes you want to stop doing it? I asked my guild these same questions sadly I did not get very many responses.
For most it is the progression of content, the downing of bosses, which then can improve your gear and raiding with a great group of people. We use to spend weeks/months working on bosses in BC(Burning Crusade). When we would finally get them down it was a huge celebration, lots of cheering and high-fives and yes epic loots.
Ones bosses loot table.
We get addicted to the things we can obtain from killing these bosses. The boss will have a list of loot items called a “loot table”, which may consist of maybe 10 or or more pieces of gear, but they only drop a few pieces each time they are killed. You may have to wait weeks before you get that piece of gear. Then you have to hope no one else wants it too. Loot drops can cause lots of drama for guilds if the loot is not handled properly that guild can quickly lose their members.
I didn’t start raiding until the 2nd expansion BC (Burning Crusade) and it is what I enjoy most in the game. Out of all the expansions out so far, I had the most fun raiding during BC.
Karazhan 10 Man Raid
My first raid was Karazhan I had no idea what to expect this was my first time in a raid. The guild I was in was very understanding of my noobness and I made many mistakes. I just tried to not make a complete ass out of myself and do something stupid and kill everyone.
Kara was coolest raid it takes place in a big old building. You start in the stables and work your way up. In each room there are different bosses to kill, for my first raid I thought it was awesome place!!
When I first started playing this game I had no idea how involved I would get into raiding. I eventually became an officer of a raiding guild and it was almost like having a second job and I loved it! Being an officer in a raiding guild has its challenges, its highs and lows.
Progressing and completing a raid instance is very rewarding, but when you guild starts to struggle and not progress well it gets harder. People start to get frustrated at the lack of progress and they will leave your guild and move on to another guild that is progressing. Which usually puts the guild in a bind because you have to always keep recruiting to keep a raid full every raid night. You have to depend and rely on our guild mates to be there every raid night otherwise no raid will happen. Usually there is always “Real Life” issues that come up that cause someone to not show up.
Near the end of Wrath(3rd expansion Wrath of the Lich King) I decided I had had enough of the drama and egos. I was tired of being an officer, the game was no longer fun for me and I just wanted to enjoy the game again. So, I changed servers and found a good raiding guild “Fatal”(my current guild). There are no egos, hardly any drama over loot (at least none that I know of but for the officers I am sure there is). Loot is handled fairly which makes for less drama. I enjoy raiding again. I like the social aspect of it and raiding with the same core people that you know you can depend on.
Blizzard has made this expansion easy for people to do more raiding, players can now see the end boss of the Cataclysm expansion, Deathwing. In BC the percentage of players that got to see the final end game bosses was less than 5%. I hope some of you have been able to get a Deathwing kill before the new expansion comes out.
Have a great raiding week, we start hard modes on Tuesday!!
Well I hope everyone had a great holiday(Christmas, New Years, etc). Sorry I am late in getting this weeks “Favorite WoW Video” post out, the last 2 weeks were just insane, moving over Christmas, unpacking = ugh!!
Well I think this will be my last Favorite WoW Video post for now (unless I can think of another category of videos to post about). The other subjects I could do posts on is about “guides” i.e. leveling guides, gold farming, class specific guides, etc. and “how to kill raid bosses”. I just dont think most of my readers would find them interesting enough. If I do find a hunter specific guild that I find worth posting then I will post it. You can basically find anything you want to learn about on YouTube.
One of the fun things toons can do in the game is dance. When you type in /dance your character will start dancing. There are alot of other “emotes” as they are called which can have your toon do certain movements, but dancing is usually the most popular. Each race and gender have their own dance, this first video shows where Blizzard got the idea for those dances. We have been hoping for years that Blizzard will give the toons the ability to do more than just the one dance, but no such luck. WoWWiki has a list showing where they come from as well.
Here is all the dances and some of the songs that inspired the dance, it is a bit long because there are lots of toons to cover.
I like this one because it shows the female goblin dancing with Beyonce.
The guy that created this video and dance to LMFAOs song Party Rock Anthem, also know as “Everyday I am shufflin'” this one keeps repeating the Shufflin’ dance over and over for 5 minutes. (I found the same one that went on for 10 hours!!) LOL I totaly agree with someones comment that Blizzard should make it possible when you type in /shufflin your toon starts doing this dance.
There were loads of other ones to show, but most were just not very entertaining and long showing the same dance over and over.
Week 2, of my favorite World of Warcraft videos. This week is; Best Boss Kill video. This one is a no brainer, it definitely has to be the World First 25m Heroic kill of the Lich King by Paragon. Being the first guild in the world to kill him on heroic, it put Paragon to #1 in the world. They have 3 players a rogue, priest and shaman Frapsing the fight, they edit each players part and make one hell of a cool video. They added in the voices of the Lich King, Tirion Fordring and King Terenas, which helps add to the video. They used music from the first Transformers movie, it fit in so well it gave me goose bumps.
The video is in 3 parts, each part has a different element to watch out for. In part 1 at about 2:30 minutes in, their main tank disconnects but is able to come back in just in time to continue tanking the Lich King. Now we have had this happen before as well a very scary moment to be sure it usually means a wipe. Also, in the beginning the key is: DO NOT STAND IN SHADOW TRAPS! (purple circle on ground = dead raid) When is not standing in something bad the #1 rule in WoW?!
Part 2, the fight continues, DO NOT STAND IN DEFILE! (black puddle on the ground = dead raid). In part 2 there is a new phase where everyone is pulled into Frostmourn, (the Lich Kings sword). They must stay grouped up, kill spirits and heal, heal, heal.
Part 3, the best part, the dramatic intense ending. The Lich King is almost dead, he is getting close to 10%(I will explain what happens at 10% later), they turn down the music and you here what is actually being said by them over their voice chat(Ventrilo). His health goes to 10.9% and he pulls the raid back into Frostmourn again, the talk over voice chat goes crazy. Their leaders get everyone calmed down and concentrate on their jobs. Now all they have to do is group up, kill the spirits, heal, heal, heal and its a win!
One thing I love about that final moment in Frostmourn, they ask a hunter to taunt LK as soon as they come back out. Usso will always be famous for his roll in this video “Usso Taunta”… yay for a hunter taunting the boss!! Now you will noticed that they are not speaking English, Paragon is from Finland. I never get tired of watching this video, sometimes if I am frustrated with life’s crap, I can go watch this video and I end up feeling better, go figure… ya I am a Wow nerd.
When he hits 10% health he kills everyone in the raid and starts to transform the raiders into “the greatest fighting force this world has ever known”. Fordring, calling for a final blessing from the Light, managed to break free and shatter Frostmourne with his own sword, Ashbringer. The spirits who had been trapped within Frostmourne, including King Terenas Menethil II, attacked their former jailer by suspending him in the air while simultaneously resurrecting Fordring’s champions, who were then able to defeat the Lich King.
Hunters can’t be a the wonderful class that they are without their pets at their side. One thing that hunters can do in this game is tame some really cool pets, some are just put in the game just for hunters to tame. A lot of them are not easy to tame by any means, especially the new oness they released with Cataclysm. Check out Petopia for the full list of tameable pets.
I love to find rare pets and tame them, I am constantly getting new ones and having to clean out my stable to house them. The problem is that the really cool looking pets can only be at your side when you spec’d as Beast Master(BM). I really think this is a tragedy as a raiding hunter, BM isn’t really a raiding spec due to the low DPS output. So, we are stuck using the boring normal pets like; cats, wolves, raptors, ravagers, hyenas, etc. We can only hope that Blizzard will one day drop this requirement and let us use these pets when we are spec’d as Survival or Marksman.
Here are a few of my cool looking pets that can only be used as BM.
This guy is a mini raid boss in the level 60 raid instance of Blackwing Lair named Chromaggus. To tame him it required a mini-raid group, a few of us went into Blackwing Lair to get the guild achievement and also so I could tame him. Since he is only level 60 and my hunter level 85, he was very easy to tame.
Chromaggus the Corehound
Ankha, the Spirit Cat, this is one of the new cats that came out in Cata, in order to tame her you had to strip off all your gear. If you had any armor on what so ever she would one-shot you dead.
Anhka, the Spirit Cat
Ban’thalos, the Spirit Owl. This bird flys really high up in the air and there are a few strategies in order to get him. Since my hunter has engineering as a profession, my cloak can be used as a parachute when I fall. I would fly up dismiss my mount and shoot at him as I fell. After many attempts on the bird nuking my ass as I fell and not having enough health by the time I got to the ground to live to tame him. I recruited a healing shaman from my guild to heal me as I fell. Once she got healer aggro from the bird, we let him kill her which then gave me full aggro(which I have to have) on the bird in order to tame it. As I was taming it she reincarnated and healed me back up to finish up the tame. Probably not the best way to do it, but it worked for me, hehe. Thank you for your help Ladyrain!!!
Ban'thalos, the Spirit Owl
My last BM special pet is Skoll, a spirit wolf well sorta, he is called a spirit beast like Ankha and Ban’thalos, but has alittle different look to him. There is an actual spirit wolf but I have yet to find him. Skoll is blue and sparking with electricity. I was doing the 5man instance Halls of Stone when I got a whisper from a hunter wanting to know if I wanted Skoll. I told him that I did, I had spent many hours camping his spawn locations. I left the group I was in and got there in time to tame him before any hunter showed up to steal him from me.
Skoll the blue electric wolf
There are many others I would love to have, but I don’t feel like putting in the time to camp their spawn spots just so I can put them in my stable to collect dust. Please Blizzard remove the Beast Master requirement on these cool pets, we spent a lot of time and effort to get them we would like to use them when we raid.
One thing that I love about this game is the many great videos that people have made using in-game characters. It just amazes me how people can edit these and make them look so cool. There are music videos, remakes of movies, guild raiding videos, how-to guides on practically everything you can do in this game, etc.
I have decided to pick a few of my favorite videos each week from a different genre. To start this week off, my favorite music videos. This was a tough one, there were so many good ones to choose from, I couldn’t pick just one. Here are my three favorite music videos.
First one is “The Lonely Island, Boombox”. This was the second music video I ever saw, I was not familiar with The Lonely Island guys. When a friend IM’d me and said, “you have to watch this video”, it instantly become one of my favorites.
Second one is a video of ‘Weird Al ‘ Yankovic’s, Amish Paradise, a parody of Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise. I have always liked the parody “Weird Al” does of this song and when I saw that someone had made a video to it, it also became one of my favorites.
Ok, this next one I couldn’t resist. I came across this video when I was watching some of the episodes of the online show called “The Guild”, I like the song but didn’t care for the video they did for it. “Do you want to date my Avatar” was in human form. I found this video the best one using in-game characters.
If you want to go see more of what is out there just pop over to YouTube.com and search WoW music videos. They will keep you entertained for hours. I know, I am so easily entertained. LOL
Congratulations Fatal!! Dragon Soul progression 8/8! A new title for us, Destroyer’s End. Thats right people we did it! We got him down last night on Fatal’s Famous Final Attempt. We spent 3 hours and numerous attempts (so many I lost count).
It is a fun, long encounter jumping to different platforms, hoping you won’t lag out and fall to your death. Each attempt we would tweak our strategy and try something different. We would get him to 5% and then hit the enrage timer, which meant instant death for us all.
Deathwing's Head
He fights you all the way no wimping out at 10% for him. Each platform has adds that need to die along with a wing claw. Once we clear all four platforms we get to attack his head, at this point he is at 20%. There are more adds to kill, the AoE damage is insane, healers are out of mana, the dps is throwing everything they can at him. I actually look down at my bars at and think, what else can I use on him? As a hunter, I wish I could summon my 4 other pets and let them loose on him LOL. I know that would be so OP, but way cool! The last attempt was a close one, most of the raid was dead when he died, but a kill is a kill no matter how sloppy it was. Was Vesha still alive when he died?? LOL
Now it’s time for some heroic modes, see you next week Deathwing!
Have you ever wondered how much you have spent on this game? When I saw this holiday sale by Blizzard I was wishing I could have paid these prices instead of what I had originally paid.
Merry Christmas!
Sale prices:
WoW: Battle Chest for $5 (reg. $19.99)
Cataclysm for $20 (reg. $39.99)
Wrath of the Lich King for $10 (reg. $39.99)
Celestial Steed for $10 (reg. $25)
Pandaren Monk for $5 (reg. $10)
After seeing this add it had me wonder, how much have I spent on this game? Well I sat down this afternoon and here is the list of things I have purchased in the last 5 ½ years.
Expansions:
World of Warcraft $29.99
Burning Crusade $39.99
Wrath of the Lich King $39.99
Cataclysm $79.99 (collectors edition)
WoW: Battle Chest (includes WoW and BC) $39.99 for 2nd account
Miscellaneous in-game stuff:
2 Name Changes ($10 each) $20
4 Character transfers ($25 each) $100
Celestial Steed $25 (yes, sadly I bought one)
1 Gender/name change $25
Authenticator $6.50
Monthly fee $14.99 June ’06 to Dec. ’11 $990
Monthly fee $14.99 for 2nd account not sure of the date but I am pretty sure it was for about a year so $190 (which is now my Moms account)
Computer needs:
2 graphic cards approx. cost $350
3 headsets approx $100 (none of which I use any more the mics broke on all 3 so I went back to a desk mic and speakers).
2 gaming mouse $100
Approximate grand total: $2161.00 for 5 1/2 years of game play, as for how many hours total, I will never tell.
Well it’s a hobby, it is what I do in my spare time it is cheap social entertainment. I use it to stay in touch with my brothers who do not live close to me, its a family affair for us even my mother plays and she is in her 70s. She is currently playing my 2nd account and has taken over the monthly payments. Now don’t be afraid to share yours we all know its probably just as bad as mine if not worse.
Well, week 2 of Dragon Soul is done. My guild Fatal sits at 7/8 (normal). We got stuck on the 1st part of the Deathwing encounter Spine of Deathwing.
Deathwing is covered in armor plates and the goal of this encounter is to knock off 3 of his armor plates. We worked on this fight for 2 nights, 6 hours total and we were not able to get all 3 armor plates off. The most we were able to get was 2. For the complete strat on this fight, check out MMO Champions.
Now we had been hearing all week that this fight was a joke for 10m raids, but we are a 25m raiding guild so we decided to continue trying to do this fight as 25. We didn’t want to drop 5 players just to form 2 10m raids just in order to get the kill.
Since Tuesday is the reset day for raids, last night(Monday) we decided to get a 10m together and of course we were able to defeat this encounter just as easily as we had heard. Afterwards our Raid Leader found the following post on MMO Champions, regarding the Hot Fixes Blizzard had done.
Spineof Deathwing
Blood Corruption: Earth will no longer morph into Blood Corruption: Death when dispelled.
Blood Corruption: Earth now applies two stacks of Blood of Neltharion when it expires on 25-player heroic difficulty.
The health pools for Burning Tendon, Corrupted Blood, Corruption, and Hideous Amalgamation have been reduced by 6 to 11% for 25-person raids on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
Hideous Amalgamations with the Superheated buff no longer pulse their AE damage after being thrown from Deathwing’s back.
If he had noticed this earlier (before we had formed our 10m and before our 10m Firelands alt run had started), we would have formed our normal 25m raid and probably could have completed this encounter. Oh well, it was still progression for our guild.
We were able to gain some valuable information though for the next fight The Madness of Deathwing which is the final encounter. Here is the complete strat from MMO Champions. I would love to link the videos of this encounter but they are way to damn long. LOL
I am very happy to report that the top guilds are still stuck at 6/8 (heroic)!! The Spine was causing them as much trouble as it was us. But, now that that hotfix has gone out it should make it easier for guilds doing this encounter as a 25m raid.
This blog is on World of Warcraft's new raid instance Dragon Soul and my experiences in this new raid zone. As well as things I want to talk about regarding the game.
Wow, Hunter Neytiri 