New Mount Hyjal

No, Mount Hyjal hasn't changed, but it's a new week so in we go!!

20:30 - Start; still deciding what the fuck we are doing.

20:45 - The real start.

21:00 - WinterTwat down 1st shot. I used Divine shield when I got the ice block, but it put my trinket into cooldown - WTF??????? Then I got iceblocked again but luckily the trinket was up again. Then I got iceblocked again!!! Ouch, both DS and trinket on cooldown. But WinterTwat died several seconds later.

21:30 - AnEnema down 1st go.

22:00 - Kaz'Roger'Roger down 1st go.

22:15 - Nearly ready to start Az'Galore

22:16 - Noob GM talked to Thrall before everyone was ready. We nearly recovered but wiped in the end. The first wipe of the night.

22:35 - Started Az'Galore properly and even burned though wave 6 easily. We started the boss and got him down to 26% before lots of people started dying. In the end Thrall died at 15%. Arggg!!
23:00 - Raid called :(

Finally the Sheild

I didn't do many battlegrounds last night, but I did get my honour back up to 10K. The reason why was mostly attributable to Stella Artois but there was a Kara run going on when I got home. They were about to have a pop at Prince and I asked if there was any healer spots open as I'd really like 2 more badges so I can get my badges tanking shield.

I think he also drops Shield of Impenetrable Darkness, but that would just be a bonus.

Either way I'll be able to get rid of the blue Ogrilla Aegis :)

The main druid healer says he'll step aside for me and everyone else is amenable (read: "Excellent, drunken HolyWarrior is coming, we'll die!") as he is quite drunk too! They are itching to go and I was still in Arathi Basin so they go ahead without me, but they still have Hoof and Spite to go.

They take out Prince in 1 go and then I swap in for Hoof. We one shot him without a warlock and no deaths and I get my 2 badges.

The druid is quite happy for me to take out Spite too, seeing as it would just waste time swapping the druid back in I go for Spite too, begging that I don't have to do the red beam. Luckily we have 3 warriors so I get assigned the green beam for phase 5.

We are 3 healers and each of us will take a full turn in the beam. Reminds me of the awful times when we used to have to swap people into the beams midway through each phase; Oh the wipes that used to cause. I don't know if the beams or debuff got nerfed or we are just too uber now, but it's fine with me.

Of course we one shotted him and now I have more than enough badges for the shield.

Latest Noob PvP Gear Question

Having started a 3v3 team as well now it looks like I now have 4 arena ratings.

My personal and my team 2v2 rating and now my personal and team 3v3 rating.

So, if there is a rating requirement to purchase a PvP item does just one of these ratings have to meet this requirement? (or at least one set of ratings personal + team)

Arena Week #4

Err, oh dear. After getting my resilience up to 251 I was really hoping we'd be doing better this week.

The arena point total has gone up to 727 after last week and we started off with a rating of 1359.

We lost 8 games. The 2 we won were against a Warrior/Warlock which gave us 16 points and a Warrior/Rogue team which gave us 12 points. A Rogue/Warlock team took a massive 20 points from us and we ended our 10 matches with a rating of 1271. A loss of 88 rating. Ouch!

So having failed in 2v2 I thought I'd give 3v3 a try. I asked in /guild and a couple of mains said they'd be interested with their alts. So HolyWarrior, RogerTheRogue and UselessHuntard ventured into 10 quick matches of 3v3.

We lost 8 matches 3-0, 1 match we killed a priest and 1 match we won. DOH! So my 3v3 team's rating dropped from 1500 to 1376!!

Bastard Teron

We went to Teron tonight. I was expecting a few wipes while people who had not seen it before got used to it and then onto some Bloodboil attempts. Oh no....

14 Freeking wipes. Four Bloody Teen.

After last weeks success the Teron Macro had been vindicated. This week we had several people who wiped the raid on multiple occasions and they blamed the macro for not working.

BULLSHIT - Do not blame your failures on the macro. Jeeezus they probably expected it to play the frigging game for them. RTFM FFS Nubz!

Medallion Loving

After a goodly bunch of all kinds of battlegrounds and handing in many batches of Concerted Efforts I have skipped a few steps in my PvP requirement list and skipped straight to the huge 40,000 honour purchase of Medallion of The Alliance.

Oh Yeah Baby! The epic version with 45 resilience on it. I reckoned that I should go straight for this as I need it for my primary role - PvE healer. So I really should prioritise it, and the resilience is a huge bonus to my PvP set. Oh, and why get a blue item if there is an epic one available now?

My resilience is now 251 and I am starting to notice it. No longer can that rogue stunlock me and finish me in seconds. Now I usually have a chance to survive the length of the lock and then stun him and get some heals off even if my bubble and trinket are on cooldown.

These 40,000 honour grinds are seriously tedious, but I think I need to get at least another out of the way for the shield and mace.

Grabbing 9 or 17K for other gear and then spending it when you are a good wedge of your way to 40K is so painful, so I may have to do them first or I may give up!!

Tying Up Loose Ends - Part 1

In preparation for WotLK, I have made a list of goals to be accomplished before I venture to Northrend.

Points 1 and 2 for HolyWarrior were

1. Clear quest log - a fair chunk of Shattered Halls Heroics, attunement quests and old world grey quests.
2. Get PvP gear and do arenas.
   

Well,I think I have just about sorted point 2. I'm up to 206 resilience and spent a good whack of today in battlegrounds so honour is building nicely.

On point 1 I've gotten attuned for Onyxia, BWL and keyed for UBRS - LOL!! And today I got myself a group of mainly guildies and a retarded mage for Heroic Shattered Halls.

4 quests I have in there.

1. One of the "Trials of the Naaru" quests
2. Kalynnas request, prequest to Nightbane
3. A David Wayne quest to get more stuff for demon killing
4. A quest to kill first boss for his Fel Embers, this maybe another important quest.

So in we go, take out Grand WarBloke Nethercruise and collect badges and quest items.

On our way to the next pull the tank advises me in /part ychat that I am low on mana and I should drink. So I sit down to have a quick drinky. A few seconds later the retarded mage says in party chat, "keep up Palla".

What a bloody cheek I think, it's a 4/5 guild run, and he is the only guildie, and basically we're carrying him and his blue gear with mostly our T5/T6 epics.

On the next pull my heal "misses" him! Hmmm.

Another boss, another badge.

At some point we come across the quest giver to save the people that are going to be exectued. I think you only get this quest if you are on the "Trials of the Naaru" quest. I didn't know it was timed. I started it. DOH!

A 3rd boss. Another badge.

We wiped on a trash pull gone horribly wrong with about 20 orcs on us.

Omoggoggogog down, 4 badges.

Final boss down and it looks like none of the captives have been executed so I get to finish the Trials of the Naaru quest by picking up the Unused Sword of the Executioner or whatever the fuck it's called.

After the final boss kill I realise that I didn't get the tears from boss 4 for David Wayne. I run back but he has despawned :(

Turns out that the Tear's of the Earthmother don't drop in heroic mode!! Eh? WTF? How stupid is that? Looks like David Wayne is gonna have to wait a little longer before I report back!

Once back in Shattrath I realise that Fel Embers isn't complete either. Turns out when you have picked up a necklace or something from NetherCruise you have to use it on one of his braziers near his thrown to get the quest item to complete the quest. DOH!!

But A'dal is happy with me and all I have left is the rescue Millhouse from Heroic Arcatraz and then I'll have Maggy to down.

I also got a complete for Kalynna so fly up to Area 52 and hand in and get "Nightbane". Yeah a little late seeing as we're 4 bosses deep in Hyjal and BT, but this is a clear up remember!!

So 2 quests complete out of 4 and I just need to go to a normal Shattered Halls now to use the braziers by boss 1 and kill boss 4 for the Tears.

But another 5 badges so 31 in total. If there is no other healing gear I want I can finally pick up my 33 badges tanking shield in 2 more badges!

Errr ... More PvP Noobiness

Quick question peeps.

If I were to [theoretically] hit an arena rating of 1575 (which is never going to happen!) I would be able to purchase a Guardians Belt (or whatever!).

The item says "Requires Personal and Team Rating of 1575" (or somesuch).

Scenario/Question: OK so I go out and buy that piece of armour and then I go do my arenas for the week and lose 10-0 and my rating drops to 1425. DOH!!! Can I still wear my sparkling new 1575 rating belt? Was it only the rating required to purchase it or is the rating also required to wear it?

Thanks for helping a PvP nab out :)

OMIGOD!!!

According to Mr. Random Ravings WotLK has made a slight change to macros.

Macros and key bindings are now saved server-side so there is no longer a need to reconfigure them when logging in using another computer.

This might not mean much to most people, but take it from someone that logs into his account on up to 5 different PCs/laptops.

This is GOLD with an extra double-sized italicized bold capital G.

I have tried many times and given up, creating the very same macros, in the same order with the same icons and names and everything on another PC and they still don't show up in the same slots when you log onto a different PC and you then have to replace them on your bars all over again.

Farming

Dare I say it? We have the first three bosses of Black Temple on farm.

We went, We Saw, We Conquered. Well the first 3 bosses anyway. Raid start was about 20:45. Najentus was 1 shot at about 21:15, Supremus got his at around 22:00 and Akama defeated his shade at around 22:45.

2 Hours, 3 Bosses, 6 Badges. What a hoot. Setting us up for Teron on Sunday and if we're up to repeating his last death then some attempts on GurgleGurgle BloodBath are in order.

26 Badges now and I'm going to have to decide whether to spend those badges on a tanking shield or whether I can get that from pvP and there is something I can get that I can't get from PvP.

Last night we went to Archimonde. We picked up our tears of the goddess and leapt off the cliff. A huge rock jumped out at us and we died. OK, I'm not going to laugh at people who die in practice anymore!!

We moved onto the encounter itself and wiped and wiped and wiped. 13 times in all. The air charge thing weren't too bad; most people had got the hang of using tears at the right time to minimise or eradicate fall damage.

It was the Goddam fire that got us almost every time. People not running away. People not ruuning in a straight line when it follows them and quite often the fire just made a ring around the melee group and tank so the healers couldn't get near.

Bloody ring of fire.

Thankfully, I only ever died DI'ing or running away to die safe after a wipe was inevitable. I even got past the house once before Archimode fingered me to death.

Yes, Archimonde fingered me too death. Had to say that again cos I wanna check the referal logs for people searching for that phrase.

RSS Feed

I have finally done it, I dunno why or what it does, but I have created a feedburner account and burnt this blog to it.

Again, I have no idea why or what it does, but this is the address:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheGoodTheBadAndTheDownrightEvil

ALSO, I have downloaded feedreader 2.90 and am trying to add feeds to it, like BRKs at http://feeds.feedburner.com/Bigredkitty but the progress bar keeps ticking and finally gives up.

Any ideas?

Healadin in the Red Beam?

Finished up Karazhan tonight, kinda. Illhoof - 1 shot, Aran - 1 shot, Chess - 1 shot, 2 shot (bastard infernals dropping around tank again) and then onto Netherspite.

We had a couple of tries on him with me taking the red beam. The first time I stayed in it till near the end but eventually died. The second time I hopped in and out but still died.

That was crap so no full clear this week, but 9 badges in about 1.5 hours ain't bad.

20 Badges now.

My Last Five Hours of WoW

I'm late on the band wagon for this one. Scenario: Blizzard have gone bust or something, BRK probably sued them over a Hunter Nerf or something, and all the servers are being turned off in 5 hours. What are you gonna do?

My first instinct was to say nothing; nothing in WoW anyway. The instant an end point is put on WoW then what is the point in playing? The whole addictive nature of WoW is down to there being no "real" end to the game. OK, you could kill Kil'Jaeden, but you're not going to stop playing then are you? No, you're gonna farm him, then you're gonna PvP a bit, or you're gonna level an alt ... Whatever.

But once you say "that's it" then what is the point? You have lost all incentive to work towards that all but impossible goal, whatever it is. Why bother. The addiction is broken, Bye Bye WoW!! Hello ... err ... Hello Kitty!

But then I thought "There is one thing I would want to do". Two Fingers to Blizz. I'd do all the things that I wouldn't dare doing at risk of getting perma-banned. I'd research and carry out whatever exploits I could.

Especially GM Island. That's what I'd do, I'd go to GM Island. Then I'd log off and go to the pub and reclaim my social life.

PvP Gear Update

I haven't updated my previous post yet with proper gear spellings, links etc, but I spent a good amount of time over the weekend doing battlegrounds.

I got a bit out of sequence with my purchases and got the Guardians Ornamental Belt first as I reckon that is also a PvE upgrade (-2 healing but plus loads of armour, crit, stamina and intellect).

I managed to do 20 odd lots of concerted efforts hand ins and got more honour than I need for the first Vindicator piece, but now I'm looking at the 2 guardians equivalents. One requires 1575 arena rating and the other 1700. Hmmm, dunno if we gonna get there ever, but looking at the Guardians Necklace I may bump that up the wish list to my next item and hope we can get our rating up.

Watch this space.

BoreDom Got Into Beta

The Bastard, our friendly neighbourhood mage who came over from FT, got an email on Saturday advising him that he had been chosen to get into the WotLK beta. The GIT, not fair /sulk !!

I am checking my email every few hours in case my invite got lost, but it hasn't turned up yet.

On the upside he said the client was 2GB and it estimated a 10 hour download. Ha Ha Ha.

By the time he got it downloaded and installed on Sunday he was in and messing about with his Death Knight, but he reported that it seems to have made his normal WoW client less stable. Hahhaha!

I don't think I want to get into the Beta now, that and the fact that come the end of Beta you will be back at level 70 and have to do the 70-80 grind all over again.

Archimode First Look

So, as we took out Az'Galore we are planning on having a go at ArchiMonkey. Everyone is currently having fun jumping off cliffs and floating. There are the occasional deaths :) I am not one of them. Hotkeyed onto my Nostromo as soon as I picked it up!

Hopefully, we'll start soon.

22:17 talking tactics.

22:25 still talking...

81% on first attempt!! over in seconds. I got thrown and used the gliding thingy successfully but floated right into a fire trail!!

22:29 - lol wipe while ressing!!

22:39 Wipe 3, but I DI'd a Shadow Priest so less durability damage for me :P

22:50 Wipe 4 :( but I got DI'd so even less damage for me :)

Raid over

First Real Az'Galore Try

We had a try at his trash a week or so but never actually met Az'Galore, so hopefully we'll get a few tries in tonight.

Two main things about this boss. Wave 6 of the trash is a right bastard. There are several tactics to help with this, snake traps and totems to take the initial hit. Tanks with spell reflect and shadow res gear. Mind Controlling Necromancers is good. And the best of all is banishing a felhunter in the previous wave and let Thrall and his buddies keep war-stomping away on the poor banished felpuppy. This interrupts a lot of spells.

The main part of the boss fight itself is that once in a while he will put a curse of doom type thing on a random(probably) player and in about 25 seconds they will die and a nasty demon type thing will spawn from their soul, Offtanks a long way from the raid need to pick these up. When we get the curse we need to run to the offtanks and wait for death! So...

Raid started at about 20:40 properly and we had our first wipe at 21:00 at around 45%. But we had no deaths on the waves like last time!!!

21:10 start second attempt at the waves and at 21:30 we start out second attempt on the boss, 21:38 HE DIED - YAH He fucking DIED!

Out first look at him and we 2-shot him . Woo Hoo.

Can you tell I'm happy?

2 more badgers too! Total:11

Arena Week #3

Now that I have 180 resilience with my 3 pieces of Merciless and 2 Gladiators this week should go better, especially since I have haad a few days to get more resilience gear. Fingers crossed.

After last weeks 4-6 loss we have ramped up to 489 whole arena points and we are starting on a rating of 1383.

Match 1: Hunter/Hunter - WIN - 1397 (+14)
Match 2: Hunter/Hunter - Loss - 1381 (-16) - Different team
Match 3: Hunter/Shaman - Loss - 1369 (-12)
Match 4: Hunter/Shaman - WIN - 1385 (+16) - Different team
Match 5: Lock/Lock - Loss - 1371 (-14) - Ouch
Match 6: Mage/Rogue - Loss - 1356 (-15)
Match 7: Hunter/Pally - WIN - 1369 (+13) - Pally was really crap!
Match 8: Shaman/Shaman - Loss - 1356 (-13)
Match 9: Lock/Mage - Loss - 1341 (-15) OUCH!
Match 10: Mage Drood - WIN - 1359 (+18) Nice :)

Hmmm, not as well as I had hoped, looks like some more progress on my PvP gear is required, more BGs methinks.

Scorecard:
Week 0: 1500
Week 1: 1412 (-78) earned 247 points
Week 2: 1383 (-29) earned 242 points
Week 3: 1359 (-24) estimate 239 points

Hand of Salvation

"Blessing of Salvation renamed Hand of Salvation, now reduces total threat on the target by 2% per second for 10 seconds while also reducing all damage and healing done by 10%. Only one Hand spell can be on the target per paladin at any one time. Now costs 6% of base mana."*

Hands for short blessings such as protection, freedom or sacrifice? Great! No more overwriting 10 or 30 minute buffs for a short term situational buff.

Remove Blessing of Salvation and make it one of these hands? NO FUCKING WAY!

I will state this now. I will not sit in a raid throwing a "Hand of Salvation" on retarded slack jawed yokel mages/locks/SPs/rogues/hunters/etc who cannot manage their own aggro.

Aggro management is a personal thing, not to be placed in the hands of someone else. If you can't watch Omen and make sure you don't overtake the tank on threat then you deserve to die! Why should a pally be assigned to baby sit you? As far as I am concerned it is taking away yet another skill that makes a good raider and makes DPS easy mode. leading to less pallies.

If Blizzards intention for Paladins in WotLK is to sit in the raid spamming this stupid broken crap mechanic of a buff then I am main-swapping :P

Welcome to T7 content EvilBastard.

Here endeth the lesson.

*Taken from recently released WotLK beta notes.

New Healing Chest and Mount Hyjal Bug

Before the raid I went and bought my Ecclesiastical Cuirass, slammed a Royal Shadowsong Amethyst in it and got in enchanted with +6 all stats - uber.

I had a problem before whether to wear Glowing Breastplate of Truth or Breastplate of the Lightbinder. This beats both easy, although I lose 8mp5, so I finally sold both.

That brings my unbuffed +heaking to 2106. Raid buffed with Toasted Smorc, Golden Fish Sticks and Elixir of Healing Power it is 2309.

So onto Mount Hyjal and a quick 1 shot of Rage WinterTwat has just been accomplished 30 minutes in.

Starting AnEnema trash now...

... and another 1 shot. It was suggested that the Infernals are bugged but that Blizz had hotfixed it. As of this moment I can confirm that they have not hot fixed it - they are still bugged. The fiery balls fall from the sky but the infernal does not spawn.

Now, 35 minutes later we are starting Kaz'Roger'Roger trash...

... and I just go 10,209 Holy Light crit!! (Probably on a lock with Fel Armour though)

..and then we wiped. Ouch!

22:13 starting 2nd attempt.

22:40 and we lost MT and most of the raid at 5% but we let thrall and his buddies tank him and we got him down, well Thrall got him down, with just 2 or 3 of us still standing!!!

Raid over and with those 6 badges I am back up to 9 whole Badgers!

Badgers Badgers Badgers

We did a little run to Karazhan tonight. We did a little swapping around for Nightbane. So that EvilBastard could get the quest item for some quest or another and some dps swapped in for healers as someone else wanted the quest and someone was hoping for alt gear.

My goal for the evening was to get 8 badges for HolyWarrior so he can get the Badgers Badges chestpiece and for EvilBastard to get the quest item from Bane. Turned out HolyWarrior only need 6 badges - forgot about the 2 from Teron!

The basic line up was similar to last weeks, except we had another main palladin healer along with the alt pally. Same alt tank and a main dps warrior. Same Shammy, 2 hunter alts and a main lock.

*cough* we *cough* wiped on Attumen trash. OK, I wasn't healing as I was trying to sort out blessings and most people weren't expecting the pull, but still!! DOH!

We then 1 shot Attumen, then Moroes, then Maiden, then pulled an R&J fight from the Opera Event.

We got Juli down to around 10% then wiped out Romeo, but Juli must have got a heal off, or we didn't quiet get her down far enough as she died about 1 second too late; gotta kill both those bastards again. But we did with no wipe.

So off to Bane after some swapping of characters, including me getting EB.

On the first trash pull EvilBastard pulled off a whopping 907 dps. WooHoo!

All set up and ready to go. Out goes the call "Who can summon him?" *eery silence* *tumbleweed rolls past*. Yep, more swapping of players so we can actually summon the fuck.

And off we go ... and the tanks loses aggro somehow within my first DOT rotation and goes and blats a DPS and then the rest of the raid. I say somehow, but it was obviously one of the DPS not waiting for a threat lead!!

Attempt #2 and he goes down like clockwork and EvilBastard gets his quest reward.

We lost some people after Bane and we nearly didn't make it to Curator, but we got BoreDom in as soon as he logged in and we went to Curator. We took him down to 24% during evocation 1 and dropped him before he got to evocation 2. That was with only 9 players including 3 healers!

So 103 Badgers for HolyWarrior and he can get the Ecclesiastical Cuirass - Badgers Badgers Badgers!!!

And a couple of Badgers for EvilBastard taking him to 109 I think.

Patch 2.4.3 LAWL

Today patch 2.4.3 hit. The main thing of interest to me is that you now get mounts at level 30 for 35 gold!! OK it doesn't really effect me as I have only got 3 characters below level 40. My priest, which is at level 35, may at some point get levelled. My druid at level 27 which has even less chance of getting levelled and my hunter who is about level 10 has bugger all chance of getting levelled.

1200 gold for a Haris Pilton bag? Screw that, go grind 160 Oshu'gun dusts or whatever for the Halaa Supply Bag.

Nether Fry non-combat pet with Shatari Skyguard exalted. Woot. Not.

Equipping an item will now cancel any spell cast currently in progress. I guess this is what Nibuca was saying about equipping your Librams after you start the spell cast. Oh well. Change those macros.

Curse of Shadows and Curse of Elements now rolled into one. Nice. But less locks in raids presumably.

Demon Skin/Armour and Fel Armour are no longer magic so cannot be dispelled. Hehehe!

Zoning into an instance on a PvE realm will now drop your PvP flag. - Woot!

Green quality gems can be found in mining nodes again. The drop rate of blue gems from mining nodes remains unchanged. i didn't even realise they'd stopped dropping until I read the notes a while back!

Removed the cooldown from regular Mooncloth. Bollocks. The price is bound to drop and I forget to use all my felcloth up :( But maybe felcloth price will increase. SOmething to look into.

Clockwork Robot Bots fight amongst themselves again. Cool, taking mine to raids again then!

Pendant of the Violet Eye: This item will again work correctly with Holy Light and Flash of Light. Didn't know it was broken. Sat in bank since I got it though as I think it's crap!

The help interface has been simplified dramatically. Excellent.

Time Management features have been implemented! WTF?

Added key bindings for tab targeting players. EH?

First Aid bandages can no longer be applied to a player with the Recently Bandaged debuff. Could they before?

The quest turn-ins for the Ahn'Qiraj war effort now give the appropriate amount of credit for each successful quest turn-in. There are still realms with the gates closed? WTF?

Undocumented: Apparently AnEnema has been accidently nerfed. He has stopped dropping Infernals. Expect a hot fix soon!

I haven't gone to check it out yet, but apparently there is some work going on in Stormwind to build a harbour. Preparation for WotLK?

The patch did some funny things to my addons and I lost all my macros. Annoyed. I rewote most of my macros and reset up my UI. I then relogged to save the changes and the old ones were back and UI was back to how it was. Wierd.

TiceNits had an even stranger issue. Some of her mounts (the flying ones of course) and trinkets and potions would come up with the tooltip "Retrieving Item Information" and she could no use them. We disabled all her addons and brought 1 back at a time. We got them all reactivated and the issue never returned.

I took EvilBastard over to Nagrand and finally got my Consortium rep up to Friendly with some Crystal Fragments and got my July Gems. Then I ground out some obsidian warbeads to get some more rep. Hopefully Honoured will give me better gems. At friendly he got 3 or 4 Green gems.

Then I finally respecced him from my custom 42/0/19 randomly created build to a cookie cutter 44/0/17 Affliction build. Lost instant Howl of Terror but gained 2 points in Suppresion decreasing my miss/resist chance on affliction spells. Also picked up the Shadow Embrace thingy which is good for raiding apparently.

Teron GoreFeck Down with Uber Macro

Tonight we are going to try Teron Gorefiend again. I am now confident that I can handle my constructs. I have mastered the simulator and now I have supplied the guild with the Macro from Alex's Blog. Am I gonna be watching Teron like a hawk and hoping I can pop a Divine shield in time? No Sirree, I wanna get them constructs.

The pally tank was assigned to dispell/cleanse and I was to be his back up in case he got constructs. There is a debuff that Teron does that can easily kill you in 2-3 ticks and this has to be dispelled. Especially on people who also have the Shadow of Death. If they die prematurely in the raid then all the constructs will appear mid raid - wipeage!

Attempt #1 - I didn't get the constructs, but TiceNits did. She hadn't put the macro on and because she is using Trinity 2 the possession bar didn't appear. I suspected this would happen as it happened to me the one time I got them and we haven't figured out how to set it up. Apparently with the vanilla interface you 1-10 buttons get overwritten with the possession bar.We wiped at 38% - yes 38% on attempt 1. So much better than 46% which was out best attempt last time.

Attempt #2 - Another good try but someone hasn't got the knack of the constructs yet and they got into the raid. 42% though.

Attempt #3 - This time I did get it. I left the raid pretty early so as to ensure I didn't die prematurely. I had the 2 macros from alex set up on 2 huge buttons near the centre of the screen and hot keyed them. I spammed the volley/shackle macro but the shackles didn't seem to catch or maybe I was just confused about what things looked like. It was a bit odd to be be a ghost, and I didn't realise it was me for a while. I shot ahead of them and started spamming macro #2. I had to change direction a bit and move to ensure any runners were the ones that were gonna get chosen by the macro, but the nearest they got to the raid was the top of the steps. Unfortunately, someone else's got loose, I killed 1 or 2 of them but we wiped at 10%!!

Attempt #4 - Other people have been using Alex's macros and advised the whole guild to get them, so looks like it really is a good macro! I got it again. This time the shackles did work, maybe I was just impatient with the cooldown last time. I killed all of mine and and then went and got lots of someone else's! I don't know how far we got him down on this attempt, but it seemed to be over halfway.

Attempt #5 - I died quite early on but got combat rezzed and managed to keep on going. Someone with the Shadow of Death debuff also caught the other debuff and wasn't cleansed in time. Constructs in raid! I managed to DI someone when wipe was imminent. 16% for this try.

Attempt # 6 - The first lot of constructs got free and wiped us but we still managed to get Teron down to an amazing 60%!

Attempt #7 - I got constructs again and killed all of mine, I have now also macro'd the debuff for Teron, so went and slammed that on him too. Then I went back and killed all of someone else's constructs with them and still had to wait around to die. When I died I realise I had a soulstone so I was back up and healing the raid again! And then Teron Gorefeck died!!! :)

2 more badges, 94 badges in total! So close to getting the Ecclesiastical Cuirass!!

But ... GORFIEND DOWN!!!

Kara Cleared

We went on the clear up before tonights raid, it was scheduled for a 20:00 start and we got started about 20:15.

Hoof 1 shotted and then Spite 1 shotted. Raid end 20:43.

28 mins for 2 bosses and inherent trash. Nice!!

4 more badges so 92 badges now :)

Noobing Up Karazhan

Last night we finally got the chance to go finish last Thursday's Kara run. We got in at around 21:00 with me, an alt holy priest, an alt prot warrior, 2 main locks, 3 alt hunters, and alt shammy and the mage applicant again. So me and a low +heal healer again.

Before the first pull the mage applicant pulled out (yeah your trial is tonight nabcake - good luck with that!) and we replaced him with a non-raider rogue.

The evening started with only 4 or 5 of us present and someone walking back into a mob that we hadn't cleared; they died as did a hunter. Luckily the tank and I were both inside and he finally woke up and taunted it. I managed to heal us through and then we started the proper run.

A quick few trash packs and we swiftly took down Curator. By the end of his first Evocate he was down to around 10% so didn't last much longer.

Up to Aran and we were doing fairly well then the blizzard came. I decided to bubble through it and keep healing, but then the elementals came and I couldn't keep myself up and everyone else. I died, but has a SS, so was up and Healthstoned and off we went. Unfirtunately come 1% everyone else died and there was only a shaman and rogue up, the shaman died leaving the rogue, Aran and his elementals. The rogue died and then Aran keeled over. 1% wipe? No, we do it with style, we did a 0% wipe - and got the credit for the kill!

Onto Chess which was obviously free badges and more shardage - yes our alts don't need much gear!

Up to Prince. We started, the T4 tank lost agrro to the T6 warlock again and Prince started running, I gave it a few seconds and DI'd the priest. Apparently it was recoverable. Not after I killed/incapacitated both healers!!

Attempt #2 saw 3 appaling infernal placements cutting the tank off from everyone. Oops!

Attempt #3 wasn't really an attempt. I went to rez someone, realise I was out of mana, sat down for a quick drink, Prince spawned on top of me - DOH!!!

Attempt #4 was perfect, the tank was taking huge spike damage and must have been below 5% on several occasions but the alt priest and I managed to heal everyone through for a quick kill without a death!

So 9 more badges for me bring the total to 88.

Nether and Illhoof are scheduled for before tonights raid.

New Shiny Armour

TiceNits and I are not doing all that well in arenas. Have you noticed? It might have something to do with the fact that TiceNits' hunter has never set foot in a battleground; or thatHolyWarrior has only done enough battlegrounds to get 37K honour on his way to the 40K honour Medallion of the Alliance. Probably both!

As a result, neither have any resilience. TiceNits' hunter (I have gotta think up a name for her) is equipped in quest greens and blues and a few Karazhan epics. HolyWarrior is mostly decked out in T5 quality gear with a few bits of T4 and a few bits of T6 quality gear.

I decided it might be time to get a little resilince. I started off by checking my bank for unused T4 tokens. 3 - Legs, Shoulders and Chest. I want to keep the chest for my Retribution set so I cashed in the legs and the shoulders for season 1 gear.

Gladiators Legguards
Gladiators Pauldrons

That's some resilience, gem slots and a 2-piece set bonus of +35 resilience.

The I looked at season 2 gear. It needs honour and AV/AB marks to purchase.

Merciless Gladiators Chestpiece - 14,500 Honour + 30 Arathi Basin marks.
Merciless Gladiators Handwraps - 10,500 Honour + 20 Alterac Valley marks
Merciless Gladiators Headpiece - 14,500 Honour + 30 Alterac Valley marks

I only had 37K honour, 34 Av marks and 22 AB marks, so I got the Headpiece and was surprised to see that the tooltip changed on the first to pieces to show that the Merciless piece was part of the set. Nice.

I then spent the majority of Sunday in Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley. Arathi was the usual collection of losses with a surprise win for my last match.

A quick trip to the vendor and I had the chestpiece and then I moved into Alterac and got a good collection of wins following the usual tactic of rush Galv, take and defend Iceblood Tower then move onto Tower Point and ensure that doesn't get abandoned. Meanwhile other teams have moved down to Frostwolf and taken the GY, towers and relief hut. By the time the Iceblood and Tower Point teams arrive Drek has either just been engaged or gets downed as you enter his room.

Then it all went to shit, the Horde started defending Galv and the next few games declined into a war of attrition usually taking place on the road from Stonehearth to Stormpike with the Horde winning every time on reinforcements. Gah!!

Finally with only 2 more losses required to get my marks we won another giving me an early exit and my last piece of season 2 - the handwraps. Resilience of 164 and some gems to buy. 4 red, 2 yellow and a meta gem to be exact. What should I gem for? Resilience or Healing? I have dropped a few hundred bonus healing with this set in preference for resilience, intellect and stamina.

So with my honour bank empty and only EOTS marks left it's time to make a PvP shopping list.

First off I looked at the new Guardians Waist Belt thing. This actually has better, stamina, intellect and spell crit at the expense of only +2 bonus healing. This at the cost of 17,850 Honour and 40 Arathi Basin marks. That's probably close on 40 actual Arathi Basin battlegrounds!! But after that I should be well only my way to the honour required.

Then we have a couple of old Vindicators items, the wrist and the feet for 9,199 honour/20 WSG marks and 13,923 Honour/40 EOTS marks.

After that it is the weapon and shield S2 gear (I think) at 25,200 and 15,000 Honour and 20 EOTS marks each.

And once I have finished that off it time to re-grind that 40K honour for the Medallion of the Alliance for Mother Shiraz encounter (or is it Archimonde?)

Update: Adding the Guardians Necklace which is another 15,300 Honour and 10 EOTS marks. Another Update: BRK reckons his Guardians necklace is the best PvE necklace in the game, I may need to bump that up the wish list when I get home and check out if the healing one is any good!

Total Required:
136,472 honour
20 WSG marks
40 Arathi marks
0 Alterac marks
80 EOTS marks

Currently Have:
1,100 Honour
20ish WSG marks
1 Arathi mark
1 Alterac mark
100 EOTS marks

So the plan

1. Grind 8000 honour in Arathi and buy Vindicators wrists.
2. Grind remaining Arathi marks up to 50 (yes 50).
3. Grind up to a total of another 10 WSG badges.
4. Move to Alterac grinding (better honour) and get enough honour for Guardians waist. Or is there a Vindicators Waist?
   
5. Continue grinding Alterac to at least 10 marks.
6. Hand in 10 lots of concerted efforts with 10 marks from each battleground.
7. Get Vindicators Feet.
8. Grind out another 40K honour for season 2 Mace and Shield utilising Concerted Efforts hand ins but ensuring 50 EOTS marks are saved for them and the necklace.
9. Repeat step 8 for the Guardians Necklace.
   
10. Repeat step 8 for Medallion of the Alliance.
11. Breath.
12. Work out what's required for cloak, other trinket, both fingers and libram!
13. Look for upgrades to Vindicator gear.
14. Upgrade season 1 gear
    
15. Give up.
    

Blue rep gear? Screw that! (I suspect at this time I have better anyway) Might be worth a little looksy though.

Enchant and gem-wise

1. Gem up head. Check.
   
2. Grind Revered with SSO for head enchant.
   
3. Gem up shoulders. Check.
4. Investigate shoulder enchants.
5. Gem up chest. Check.
6. Enchant chest.
7. Investigate glove enchants.
8. Get leg armour.
9. When honour grind (1) is complete gem/enchant wrists.
10. When honour grind (4) is complete gem waist ??
11. When honour grind (7) is complete gem/enchant feet ??
12. When honour grind (8) is complete gem/enchant weapon and sheild.
13. When honour grind (12) is complete enchant cloak.
    

Enchants and Gems, I hate to say it but I may need to get to revered with SSO. I've only ever done a few dailies there, so that may take some time, but they have a head enchant that gives +18 stamina and +20 resilience.

So, updates coming for correct names of items, links for mouseovers, running resilience totals etc.

But please, if anyone can give me a pointer as to what gems a healadin should use for PvP I would be very happy.

Preparation for WotLK

There's been a shared topic from Blog Azeroth going round about what are you doing to prepare for the upcoming expansion. I thought I wasn't doing any preparation at all, just rolling along doing what I've always been doing. Raiding with HolyWarrior, grinding mats with EvilBastard, BGs and a little light levelling with PS the Rogue and levelling various alts.

But, in a way, I suppose I have been preparing. I want PS, HotPants and BitchSlapper at level 70 ready to go; I want HW to have a full set of T5/T6 ret gear to ease the 70-80 grind and I want to max out all of the professions and many other things.

So a list perchance of aims and WotLK preparations:

HolyWarrior

1. Clear quest log - a fair chunk of Shattered Halls Heroics, attunement quests and old world grey quests.
2. Get PvP gear and do arenas.
3. Fill quest log with completed Netherstorm quests to hand in the day WotLK goes live.

EvilBastard

1. Max Enchanting, Fishing and Cooking.
2. Improve gear.
3. Empty quest log and refill as above
   

PS the Rogue

1. Hit level 70.
2. Re-learn how to play.
3. Max LW, Skinning, First Aid, Cooking and Fishing.
4. Fill quest log with completed quests.
   

BitchSlapper

1. Hit Level 70.
2. Max all professions.

HotPants

1. Hit Level 70.
2. Max all professsions.
   

That's all I can think of right now, no doubt the list will increase.

Black Temple Hijinks

Mkay, so after this weeks poor raid turn out we were over-subscribed to the Black Temple raid, the tanks, pallies and locks all had to roll for a spot.

Within half an hour we took Najentus out first try, even though I died near the end as I got spined on low health when no-one had healed me for ages, but I had a soulstone so was back up for the death.

45 minutes later we one-shot Supremus.

On the trash next I got Pillager's Gauntlets for minimum bid :)

45 minutes and 13 dead again and we 1 shot Shade of Akama.

2 Badges off each boss so 79 badges now.

Edit: Yes that's bosses 1-3 of Black Temple without any wipes in about 2 hours.

Nearly Enough Badges

We were supposed to raid last night, but just like tuesday, we didn't have enough available. 19 people at best due to holidays.

So we went to Kara instead. It took us over half an hour to persuade enough people along and ended up taking a guild applicant too.

We had me(HolyWarrior) and a non-raider healer paladin with very low +heal, Elephant's tank alt, 2 hunters (an alt and a main), 2 warlocks (an alt and a main) a non raider rogue, an alt shaman and a non raider rogue.

We took out Attumen with ease and headed up to Moroes. The non-raider rogue swapped out for an alt rogue and the alt shammy swapped to his main (a tank) to OT Moroes. Moroes down easy.

We headed of to Maiden and got the shammy back. I instructed the other paladin to put Blessing of Sacrifice on the Main Tank and I did the same. When we got sleeped I did not break once. I assumed BoSac had worn off, but I checked and it hadn't.

Has it been nerfed? Can a player only have one BoSac on them and mine was overwritten? I dunno, it got a bit hairy, but the other pally did remarkably well while I was sleeped. He died eventually but I was able to heal again by then.

We then quickly burned our way up to Opera and pulled R&J. Expecting this (lucky guess) the shammy had brought his tank in again. We charged straight in but coordination was a bit slow without and form of voice chat and even though we held off on J she still died (1 dps must have still been on her) too quickly. Rom went down too slow and so they both came back up and we had to kill them both again. No wipe and still a one shot.

Shammy back on and we went to the back door and headed to Nightbane. This was going to be tight with only 2 healers and even more tight as the other pally had so far only managed 50% of my healing.

We did fairly well, losing the applicant mage and the alt lock around the first flight, then a hunter and a lock around the second flight and the other hunter and the pally soon thereafter. We got him to his 25% flight and wiped as he landed. Not bad going!

So the alt hunter brought his main pally and we wiped the floor with him.

A fun run, not very organised and lots of standing around at times complemented by some non stop pulling action at others. Just shy of 2 hours in we call this to leave some bosses for the weekend. 9 badges though so HolyWarrior goes from 64 to 73.

WoW Fiction

In case you were unaware there is some independent WoW fiction out there on the web. This is generally based on the WoW universe and to a greater or lesser extent follows the WoW lore.

I've even had a go at it myself, but being a literary idiot you guys are never gonna see my attempts.

You may have seen a link over on the right to a blog called Stab in the Dark - check it out now. I'm not going to write a review about it, mainly because I ain't no literary critic; but I am addicted to the story and would seriously recommend checking it out.

Arena Week #2

I suspect we actually missed the 1st week of Season 4 as we decided to play our 10 arena matches on a Wednesday so it may be week #3 or even #4. But for us it's week 2.

I am still the arena nub and don't actually know for sure how arena points are calculated, how the +/- rating works or even if it's your last 10 matches or your best 10 matches or whatever that is used to calculate you rating/points for the week. Please can someone explain this?

So anyway. After last weeks 2-8 loss our rating was down to 1412 and we had accrued 247 arena points.

Match 1: Priest/Hunter - loss - 1396(-16)
Match 2: Priest/Hunter - WIN - 1413(+17) - Same team.
Match 3: Mage/Hunter - loss - 1399(-14)
Match 4: Rogue/Mage - loss - 1386(-13) - We took the mage down first just after TiceNits died and left me and the Rogue to duel it out, this took some time but he got me down when he was below 10%.
Match 5: Warlock/Shammy - WIN - 1400(+14) - This was very hectic and no tactics were involved. They both went down together leaving us both standing.
Match 6: Warlock/Hunter - WIN - 1415(+15) - Finally remembered to equip my PvP trinket
Match 7: Hunter/Pally - loss - 1401(-14) - The pally was expert with LoS we just couldn't get him down.
Match 8: Hunter/Priest - loss - 1385(-16) - I died closely followed by the priest, leaving the hunter with the most mana to win - not TiceNits.
Match 9: Rogue/Mage - WIN - 1400(+15) - Same team as match 4. The rogue vanished just before death then I died. TN finished off the rogue then wasted the mage.
Match 10: Warlock/Druid - loss - 1383(-17) - Absolute carnage.

So on aggregate we are down 29 rating points but we did win 4 matches this week and it was much more fun. I really must pick up some arena gear. I'm not sure about the reputation blues but I have some T4 tokens which apparently is now the only way you can buy season 1 gear. I also have lots of battleground marks and a huge stack of honour, that should get me some good stuff!

Open Beta Signups.

Blizzard now have an opt-in page to the Open Beta. I am not sure whether I want to participate or await for the production release and be awed by Northrend in it's finished state.

However, just in case I do fancy it, I would be gutted if I wasted the oportunity, so I opted both of my accounts in. It's a lottery, and I'm not usually that lucky with lotteries, but at least I have 2 chances.

I really should get TiceNits to opt in as well.

WoW Account Lockdown

Finally, after 4 years, Blizzard have figured out how to make you immune* to keyloggers.

Let me introduce you to The Blizzard Authenticator available on the new Blizzard Store; a two factor authentication device that gives you a one time passcode in addition to your usual username/password login.

What you do is buy this Authenticator for £6 from the Blizzard Store. When it arrives you need to tie it to your account (or accounts) through the account administration area on the WoW website (presumably done with the serial number of the fob).

Now when you go to log into WoW you press a button and it will give you a randomly generated number produced with a combination of your unique seed and then time. Blizzard will then perform the same operation on the login servers because they have the time and your unique seed and if the 2 codes match then your in.

It's a one time code and it expires after 60-90 seconds. So even if a key loggger got hold of your password, account name and this passcode it is useless to them as the passcode has already expired.

So unless your are extremely unlucky and get hit by a "Man-in-the-Middle" attack then you are now secure from being hacked.

You keylogging gold selling account hacking bastards can die in a train wreck!

Unfortunately by the time I heard of this the Blizzard EU store had run out :(

*OK, 99.9% immune, whatever, a lot safer, look somewhere else for accurate figures ... blah!

Quick Underbog Run for Badges

Went on a quick Underbog run for the daily heroic, we had one semi wipe where I DI'd the shaman for a quick recover but other than that only had the lock and the shaman die once each.

So, with the quest done that was another 6 badges towards my chest so 64 badges now.

Voidy Still Ain't Fixed

Who would have though I'd be calling TK a yawn?

We haven't been here for ages but TiceNits and some others never did their Ashtongue quest. Combined with that we have some key raiders/leaders on an rl afk.

So we went Tempest Keep.

We went to A'lar first. Had a wipe. Then he bugged on the second attempt and we got him down to 1% on the 1st tanking position even though we knew he would bug. On the 3rd attempt we got him down easy.

Then we went onto Voidreaver and even though he has supposedly been fixed - HE FUCKING HASN'T!!!

We have had 2 wipes (well resets) on him now and are just starting the 3rd attempt...

...and just as we were set to go on the 3rd attempt some retard body pulled him.

So, that raid was just a total Cluster F*ck!

So 2 badges from A'lar making a total of 58 badges.

We Got Haxxed

I logged on this morning and checked the forums and there was a post about the guild bank being robbed.

Turns out that one of the founding members who plays horde now still has an officer in the guild and the officer/restricted access tab of the guild bank got wiped out and that character deleted.

We don't know if the account got hacked yet or we got robbed.

But 2 things that I was promised got taken ;'(

Update to follow.

Complicated Healing Macro Fun

Ever since I got my new PC I've been meaning to finish putting my UI and macro's back the way I had them on my old one. As I had a nice healing boost from my new mace and trinket last night I decided it really was time to at least restore my healing macro's.

So with a bit of a reminder (read: plagiarism) from Mystic Chicanery I rebuilt them. Ahem, just as we were about to make the first pull.

What I had was a HL(6) and a FoL macro doing the same thing. I Manually weave in the HL(6) in every 5-7 casts to keep up Light's Grace and a HL(11) macro for those "Oh Shit!" moments.

HL(4) and FoL Macro

#showtooltip Flash of Light
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide();
/use Essence of the Martyr
/use Ribbon of Sacrifice
/cast [target=mouseover] Flash of Light
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();UIErrorsFrame:Show();

Big Holy Light Macro

#showtooltip Holy Light
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Divine Illumination
/cast Divine Favor
/cast [target=mouseover] Holy Light
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();UIErrorsFrame:Show();

Now what I am thinking of doing is:

a) Incorporating Rohan's cast sequence (an excellent post which I read yonk's ago but never got round to implementing) into the FoL macro and then I can lose the HL(4) button altogether. Replacing the /cast [target.... line with:

/castsequence [target=mouseover] reset=10 Holy Light(Rank 6), Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light

b) Incorporating Libram swapping into macro after the cast. I discussed this with Nibuca quite some time ago and never implemented it. A simple choice of one of these should suffice. It can go after the cast as it is equipped during the cast time apparently.

/equip Blessed Book of Nagrand
or
/equip Libram of Souls Redeemed

c) Swapping Divine Illumination into the FoL macro for increased mana efficiency.

d) Incorporating targettarget and if friendly into the cast sequence macro

e) Having 2 FoL/HL macros. One with FoL(6) and HL(4) for very mana efficient healing and a FoL(7) and HL(6) for when things get more hectic.

You'll notice the /script lines. These stop error messages being shown on the screen when trinkets are not available for use and when DF and DI are not ready yet, unfortunately you still hear the messages. If you know a way to stop the messages being said by your avatar please let me know.

The trouble is you are limited to the number of characters you can have in a macro, something like 250.

Just by doing a,b and c above my macro now becomes:

#showtooltip Flash of Light
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide();
/cast Divine Illumination
/use Essence of the Martyr
/use Ribbon of Sacrifice
/castsequence [target=mouseover] reset=10 Holy Light(Rank 6), Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light, Flash of Light
/equip Libram of Souls Redeemed
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();UIErrorsFrame:Show();

This is 360 characters and I haven't even put in 5 x (Rank 6)

Now I have read somewhere about getting round this by calling a macro from a macro, but I can't find it anywhere at the moment.

Ideally I will have 2 separate macro's just doing the 2 separate castsequences as described in (e) and then calling one normally and the other with a modifier such as shift or alt.

Can someone please tell me how to do it? plxkkthxbai

TiceNits has a Question

TiceNits got what she thought was a great upgrade. Many Sites she looked it up on say it is in an upgrade, but her damage doesn't bear up to this supposed uberness.

So here is the question: Are Leggings of Channeled Elements better than Leggings of Tirisfal?

Come on, there have gotta be some uber mages out there who can tell us what is better and why? Bearing in mind that when she equips them her damage drops.

Healing Upgrades and 3 Bosses in One Night

I picked up Essence of the Martyr at a cost of 41 badges so I'm down to 50 badges now and got my new mace the +81 healing enchant before tonights raid and off we went to Mount Hyjal. We just about started on time and got WinterTwat down in less than 25 minutes from raid start.

NicePallyClassLeader had me going round taunting the mobs from the NPCs - eh? WTF? I wanted to show what an uber healer I was. /cry

I am typing this during the raid so now we are going to go for AnEnema.

30 minutes later and we wiped on AnEnema. We lost the main tank at 50% and we thought it was a wipe, but the druid Off Tank managed to get aggro and I was keeping him alive. Unfortuneatley I was down to 25% HP needing a heal because I was almost out of mana. I didn't get it even though it was called over team-speak. AnEnema was down to 20% when I died, the druid tank died soon after and we really did wipe!!

Another 30 mins later and we got AnEnema down on the 2nd try with 13 dead!!

And I won Bastion of Light. WooHoo!!

Next up was Kaz'Roger'Roger who we 1-shot 40 minutes later!!

3 bosses = another 6 badges, bringing the total back up to 56.

Popped into the auction house and picked up a Teardrop Crimson Spinel for 399 gold and popped that right in :)

That brings my bonus healing unbuffed to 2056!!!

We Started Arena Season 4 (Week #1)

Now that Arena season 4 has started TiceNits' hunter alt and HolyWarrior have decided it is time to start our Arena career.

We played a few non-rated matches a month or so back but now it is time to dive into the world of rated games.

WARNING/DISCLAIMER: Total Arena Nub post to follow...

Now we don't have the intention of losing 10 quick games a week, but we're fully prepared for that to happen!!

Why? Well by my reckoning and limited knowledge all teams/players have been reset to 1500 so for the first few weeks we could be rated against teams with 2300 rating and full Season 3 gear; whilst HW is in T5 equivalent PvE gear and TiceNits' hunter alt only has a few pieces of Kara gear. This means ... well ... err ... it means we're crap!

Match 1 - Druid/Mage - Lost 1483 (-17)
Match 2 - Mage/Lock - lost 1467 (-16)
Match 3 - Druid/Lock - lost 1452 (-15)
Match 4 - Pally/Hunt - lost 1434 (-18)
Match 5 - Pally/Warr - lost 1419 (-15)
Match 6 - Druid/Lock - lost 1406 (-13)
Match 7 - Priest/Sham - lost 1389 (-17)
Match 8 - Pally/Lock - WON 1407 (+18)
Match 9 - Priest/Sham - lost 1393 (-14)
Match 10 - Mage/Lock - WON 1412 (+19)

LOL - in almost all the losing games we lost very quickly. A couple of them were close and longer fights.

In match 8 we pretty much just burned the pally down, when the lock was actually doing anything I was stunning him or bubbling and healing through. Once the pally went the lock went very quickly.

In Match 10 we were concentrating on the lock but then we lost him, dunno if he died round a corner to the pet when we were feared or what, but we went onto the mage and started burning him down waiting to get ganked by the lock. It didn't happen, the mage died and we got our second win!!

2 WINS!!!

I'm not sure how these point wins/losses are calculated all I can guess is that the higher the rating of the team you beat the higher the points you gain and the higher the points they lose; conversely, the higher the rating the team that beats you, the less points they get and the less points you loss!

So for week 1 we went 2-8 and lost 88 points. Roll on next Wednesday. Any info or advice from arena veterans would be greatly appreciated.

Lord Athune

HolyWarrior and EvilBastard have both completed all of the Midsummer Festival Quests except the final chain to face Lord Athune in Slave Pens.

On Sunday afternoon EB and TiceNits' hunter got into a Heroic Slave Pens with some guildies.

EB handed in the quest to the Earthen Ring rep dude just inside the entrance but did not get any follow ups. Wierd. We proceeded to where Ahune hangs out and there was no quest there. Oh well, we had a pop at him but over whelmed by the adds so we decided to skip it, finish the run then come back on normal mode. TiceNits switched onto her main mage and we wiped the place out, EB getting the 2 explorer dudes for Lost in Action in the process.

An easy clear later and we set it to normal, got TiceNits' hunter back on and went back in. This time the Eartern Ring dude had the follow up quest so I took it and we went onto Ahune's room.

This time we wiped the floor with him. 4 times! Normal mode everyone can summon him once and you don't have to reset the instance which apparently you do have to do on Heroic. He dropped some nice gear and you get 12 gold just for summoning him.

And of course once you kill him and loot his ice core or whatever it is then you get to hand it in for a cool Summer Festival Tabard.

The Heroic boss killing gave EB another 3 badges too bringing his total up to 107. Sounds like an opportunity to go shopping. I must figure out a gear upgrade path for him.

More Teron Gorefiend Fun

Anyway, so we enter Black Temple and fight our way through Shade of Akama's trash and then start him up once we spend about half an hour going through tactics - Grrr!

Out new Tankadin says that if the bracers drop he'll be uncrushable - err WTF??? I am already uncrushable and working on replacing excess avoidance and defence with +stamina. Grrrr!

It doesn't start well and the new tankadin screws up somehow, I don't really know, but he wasn't breaking sheep or something. We wipe as the Shade gets to Akama. He gets a good reeming from NicePallyClassLeader about it in public - not the way I would handle it but funny for everyone else!! Maybe I'll get to tank sooner rather than later!

So we start it again and get him down this time. He drops some nice tanking boots and some leather crap and 2 badges each. Of course I can only bid minimum on those boots so I obviously don't win them!

Onwards and upwards we head to Teron Gorefiend's room. We clear trash and start him up. This time I am right on the main tanks heels and manage to keep him alive till the other healers arrive. I have moved my unit frames around a little so that I can see when he casts Shadow of Death and then immediately see if I am in the target of target frame. These frames are placed just above grid so I can keep a close eye on them.

I also moved my Divine shield onto the button on my Nostromo next to my heal button. The idea is that if he targets me and starts casting Shadow of Death then if I hit Divine Shield fast enough I can avoid having to do the construct killing.

Anyway so we are into the fight and TiceNits gets targetted instead of me, she was planning the same thing and manages to Ice Block before it hits and avoids the debuff. (Rogues can Cloak of Shadows too). Second time round though she misses, or Ice Block is on cooldown and does get it!

Other people get it every 30 seconds over the course of the fight and pretty soon someone's constructs reach the raid and wipe us.

We have another 3 or 4 attempts at him and still people's constructs reach the raid and wipe us. Each time though I never get the debuff so I can't tell if I can be quick enough. The main tank and I are always in the last few left standing though!

I did DI a pally who was stood right next to him though, lol, what a waste. The best we did was probably the last attempt where we got him down to 46%.

The key to this fight is that he will cast Shadow of Death on random people. You have 55 seconds before this buff will kill you. Once dead you are a ghost for 60 seconds and 4 Shadowy Constructs spawn at your dead body. As a ghost you have a new cast bar with several abilities on it. Everyone must be able to control (read: kill) all 4 of their constructs before they reach the raid, because they will wipe it!!

The generally accepted tactic is to use Spirit Volley which does some AoE damage to all of them and then use Spirit Chains to shackle them. Then tab through them using Spirit Lance which damages them and slows them down and using Spirit Volley if the CD finishes.

If you kill yours you can help anyone else who has constructs up or go and put a debuff on Gorefiend* or heal* friendly players.

Check out the Flash Mini Game to get an idea of how to handle your constructs.

*Writing that from memory, will have to check that an edit it tonight.

Let's Spend Some Badges

Tonight we're going back to Black Temple to try and get some more bosses down. But first I figured that there is no point in 239 Badges of Justice sitting stewing in my bank.

Also for the moment I don't reckon I'm going to be able to tank in the near future so the priority for the tanking badge shield is pretty low.

So with 239 badges to spend I determined that there were 3 items I wanted (not including the tanking shield)

Essence of the Martyr (41 Badges) - a trinket that gives +84 healing and has an on use of +297 healing for 20 seconds.

Ecclesiastical Cuirass (100 Badges) - chest that gives +97 healing along with plenty of Stamina, Intellect, Crit rating and a blue socket with a critical strike socket bonus. Although a blue gem may deactivate my meta gem. Must check that out.

Gavel of Naaru Blessings (150 Badges) - Main Hand, although I will lose about 6mp5 I think I get a massive +118 healing more than my Shard of the Virtuous.

Well I chose the mace. It's 6 mins to raid start so I don't have time to go get the mats for the +81 healing enchant, but even without it I have boosted my +healing by 37.

Down to 89 badges now then. A half clear of Kara should get me the chest piece and then a couple of weeks for the trinket and then I can finally save up again for the tanking shield.

I need a lot of primal life now, EB still needs some for a spell damage enchant. HW now needs plenty for the Shadow Resistance Set and now I need another 8 for another weapon healing enchant. Looks like EB is going to be farming Zangermarsh for quite some time!!