Patch 4.3.2, on the PTR…Cross-Realm Raids/Class Changes

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.

Coming in Patch 4.3.2 – Cross-Realm Raids

Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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.

Neytiri

Why do you like to raid?

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!!

Neytiri

Favorite WoW Video: Best Boss Kill

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.

Neytiri

BM the Spec with the best pets, but bad for raiding!

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.

Neytiri

Favorite WoW Videos, Music

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

Enjoy!

Neytiri

Progress Update, Deathwing the Destroyer is DEAD!

We did it! Deathwing is DEAD!

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!

Neytiri

Dragon Soul Week 2: Stuck on the Spine

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.

• Spine of 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.

Neytiri

Dragon Soul, what a joke… where is the challenge?!

What happened to the good ole’ days when raiding was much more of a challenge?  When it use to take weeks and hundreds of attempts to kill one boss.  When you had to have resist (i.e. shadow, frost, nature, etc.) gear for certain bosses or you couldn’t raid. I remember when it took us months to clear SSC, TK, MH and BT.  Oh, how I miss the BC raids. 

Serpentshrine Caverns, Tempest Keep, Mt. Hyjal and Black Temple

Why has Blizzard made Dragon Soul so damn easy to clear?  Now it just takes a few attempts and they are dead in one night, well at least for the top end guilds.  They say if you have heroic tier 12 gear (which our guild does) you are over-geared for Dragon Soul.  If that is the case then make these bosses a bit more of a challenge for these guilds.  Not just a normal/heroic mode but maybe have an intermediate level, where we can skip the normal mode and do them on a more difficult level meant for our gear.

Maybe its just the skill of the players?  Is it because a lot of us have been playing this damn game for so long, that it is easier for us to learn the fight mechanics?  Most of us long time raiders should know by now what the #1 rule in WoW is…DO NOT STAND IN FIRE!!!

I understand that Blizzard wants to open these raid zones up to more of the casual player.  During BC only 5% or less of players actually got to see the end game raiding bosses.  With the new LFR (Looking For Raid) system (that came out in the 4.3 patch) Blizz made it possible for the more casual player to PuG (Pick-Up-Group) the new Dragon Soul zone. 

They want players to be able to see these bosses, get the new epic gear and not limit it to just the hard-core raiders.  When you use LFR the bossses are scaled down in difficulty, even much easier than the normal mode that we are raiding the zone at now.

Last night I was hoping that the heroic modes would slow guilds up and take them a few weeks (months would be better) to clear RS.  But, when I checked  WoW-Progress, this morning there is already a guild that is 5/8 in heroic modes.  So, more than likely there will be a world first heroic kill of Deathwing by the end of the week.

My guild is not as nearly as hard-core as some of these top end guilds (thank god) and we are still working on clearing DS on normal mode.  For our first week of progression we were 6/8, which we are perfectly happy with.  Our second week progress, we killed 5/8 bosses in 3 hours and we’re still surprised it was so easy.  I don’t know how much longer I can continue to raid if they keep making these raid instances so easy.  Where is the challenge? 

Neytiri

Ultraxion, and the button that wiped the raid!

Button, button, who has the button?  Or rather who can find the damn button and click on it in time to keep their ass alive?!?!  As promised here is the SS (screenshot) of the stupid button you have to click on in order to remove yourself from the twilight realm for 5 secs so you will live.  (It is in the bottom middle of the pic, the big, purple swirly button). 

CLICK THE DAMN BUTTON!!

During the encounter there are TWO times when players MUST click on this button; first when Ultraxion puts Fading Light on you and second when he casts Hour of Twilight.  If the player does not click on that button when they are effected by Fading Light or when he starts to cast Hour of Twilight you will die.

After spending a very frustrating evening trying to kill him that first night, (mostly because people could not find the damn button on their screens or they did not click on it in time).   The next night pretty much started off the same way. 

CLICK THE DAMN BUTTON!

CLICK THE DAMN BUTTON OR YOU DIE!!

We soon discovered we had something else going against us that night.    Huge amounts of lag once his health got below 50%.  Alot of people were complaining about it.  Mine was dropping down to zero and my game would just freeze up until we wiped then to went back to normal.   Well during that run back into the instance our RL saw a post that other guilds were experiencing the same problem and found out that the addon Recount was the issue.  We were using an out of date addon, tsk tsk!!   Raiders should know better!  LOL 

Once we disable Recount, our lag was gone and it was then an easy kill for us.  Everyone was finally able to find and CLICK the new button and do what they needed to do, so Ultraxion eventually coughed up his loot.  So the moral to this story is… don’t use an “out of date” raiding addon and CLICK THE DAMN BUTTON!! LOL.

Neytiri