The Guild Builder!

I'm out of the club, I lost my blogging card....cuz this blog isn't about 5.0, Panda's or anything that happened at Blizzcon. I figured you'd be inundated with all that. Right now the info is coming from Blizz in bunches so I'll break that up and talk a tiny bit about something I've decided to take on.

I'm done with raiding, I mean, I'm done raiding on a set schedule. Life is just to hectic to say I'm going to raid with someone and have something change where I have to leave. I'm frankly not into looking for someone fit what I'm looking for. I'm not the type to allow others to wait on me to show. That just wouldn't be fare.

My options are to look for a casual guild that is super big and made level or grab a guild that has a raid team and be the outsider who try's to even get heroic tanking jobs. So instead, I'm going to LEVEL a guild.Why? Not sure, but I wanna try it.

A few months back I got ahold of a guild with a terrible name and three bank tabs. So I've put all my toons in this terribly named guild and started doing some quests. After 3 weeks I am now half way thru LEVEL 1...omg. The XP it takes is overwhelmingly high. Blizz really set the bar high getting to level 2 with a guild. To give you an idea, after 3 weeks of questing in my epic tabard, I couldn't hit level 2 until next week. To top it off, no one, and I mean, no one wants to join a level 1 guild. There is no reason too.

So whats the plan, not sure. I've made a macro and I try every day to hit up all the unguilded people I run across for every 3 I get, 2 leave. I don't wanna be a trade spammer and frankly I'm embarrassed about my guilds name. Sooooo until I can change it, I won't be doing the trade route. Until I get to level 2, I won't have success recruiting the lower level toons.

Back to the that plan...Well, I'm a tank, a pretty good tank. At least good enough for the heroics pose now in difficulty. I offer an insta que to those who want to gear an unguilded non raiding toon. Once I get a few who wanna get those toons some gear, we can hit that magical level 2 and then I can get the lower alts to come and stick.

I guess I should wonder whats the point of this, but I'm bored with the game, not in a place I can raid and just want to do something I have done before. This is my next project....

Stay tuned!

Tanks Gone Bye...

I was once told that you should thank the people you need too thank before its too late.

Going thru some Blogs last night, I was listening to the Double O Podcast about tanking done a few weeks back. What a great episode and I learned some stuff but...I also started thinking about those I have tanked with, set up a relationship with and I think I need to take a minute to say thanks to them, tell them what they did to advance me and let you see the pixels that not only helped me become a better tank but allow you to stroll down this memory lane as well.

Below is the links to those who I've Co~Tanked with and a bit about how they moved me along:

Saharah - The person responsible for me being the player I am, in fact I rolled a tank so he could play his hunter that he really enjoyed playing. All in all, this is the person that taught me to tank and was an in game friend. Sah, ran the guild, was the RL in TBC and basically a father figure to us all. A bit of a misunderstanding in the guild and resulting drama drove the guild apart.

Solner - The coolest RP'r I've met in game. On top of that a hell of a tank with so much of a real life it held him back from being one of the best in the world, IMO. Solner, taught me pace, mob control and how to min/max. He also allowed me to make mistakes and guided me to be better. He was a no nonsense tank and I hope I take some of my style from him.

Kurok , Jexar and Janthar - My Co~Tanks, from a guild I was in called Natural Twenty. I was newer to hard core raiding when I joined them and we sat around top 1000 in the world during Ulduar. All of these guys were ahead of me in skill but always made me work to earn my spot. In fact Kurok, gave up his tanking spot to DPS so I could tank and Janthar played his Shammy. Natty 20 was the most talented guild I was ever in. One day I logged on to see the GMotD state "thanks for the memories, we will not be a guild as of next week. The members of Natural Twenty made me a capable raider.

Soten -Best tank I've played with while he was on and had incredible motivational influences on the raid and he was a natural leader. Amazingly he was only a teenager but I at time felt in awe while tanking with him. I learned so much from him. We were in a guild called Refuge, they were super casual, none the less great.

Shem -  He was such a great guy and a good tank. The guild always made him feel inferior due to how good Soten was. He was good, he never knew how good. During Wrath pally's were OP and that fueled Shem and Skreebo in the ongoing "Pally's are OP debate".

Skreebo/Raxial - What a goof! This guy was probably the closest friend I had in game. He knew so much about every class in game and helped me learn warrior and druid tanking. He had a job that didn't allow him to raid hardcore and he got tired of the game far too fast. He took about 3 extended breaks while we tanked together. Amazingly he had so much grace he made a troll look like a ballerina while pulling.

Vars - I learned something every time I logged on to raid with him. Much to my chagrin none of it was good. Vars was the GL and RL for the guild he was in and ruled it with a heavy hand. He was a loot hog and disingenuous. No wonder he had gone thru several tanks including me and the other pally he recruited at the same time as me. It was a great lesson thou and other than the comment about "our guild doesn't give new people gear because bring new raiders in is a big investment" there are no hard feelings. Hey Vars....the big investment is the $50 it cost me to learn how bad things really can get.

Elms - The best DK I've ever seen! He was RL, tanked and always wanted the kiting job or OT role. He never missed anything and made improvements on the fly. We were top 3000 in the world and I think most of that was because Elms was so good at his jobs. I really wish things would have been different and I could have stayed with that guild.

Lifedrynker - What do I say about Life? He was a tremendous player, an officer without the role and just let me do my thing...Tank. He had ZERO ego when it came to putting the best class in its proper role. He was a step ahead at all aspects of the game and I wish I had his awareness. Life just recently left the game due to burn out, too bad we didn't get to tank more together. I could have learned alot from him had we tanked more together, as it stands I'm a better player for working with him. Who knows maybe SWTOR will see me and life getting hit in the face again.

And I never tanked with any of them but a special big shout out to those who have helped me and did so much work with the pally community at Maintankadin.com.

Pink is the new Green.

Cancer is bad! It is such a  horrible disease that takes far to many lives in the world each day. So any cause that works to fix and treat cancer is a great thing. If you look here and other places on the net you will see there are so many places that want to help and ways to show that you helped put an end to this terrible disease.
The most recognizable and widely embraced is the Pink Ribbon used for breast cancer awareness. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and most major sports pay respects to this and allow the players to wear pink to honor the month. I think this is amazing and it's sad that this is only done during this special month but...it is what makes it an awareness month.

Something I've noticed so much lately is not only are more people wearing the pink to show that they care and want to help, it seems many retailers are cashing in on this as well. If you look at this from a business sense its a no brain money maker but the purpose of this is supposed to for increased donations and income for breast cancer research. Now, I'm not saying donations are not being made to the organizations that need the help but if you look at pricing at a retail stores the mark up is higher on anything pink during this time. This is not to bash anyone so I'm not going to link examples but a local NATIONAL chain sporting good store has a display as soon as you walk in showing the pink items they have. Very nice and respectfully done. If you head back to the specific isle to look at others they offer, the pink items cost about 25% more for the same type of item, the only difference, it's pink. This was across the board, something as simple as a branded T-shirt that was pink is now $3 to $5 more just for the color.

While wearing pink during this month is cool, remember that probably not all the extra profits go where they are needed and far to many people are cashing in on self profit for this to be only done for only good intentions. Here is an article I found that might give you some different thoughts as well.

Remember while wearing pink during this month does so many so much good, its also helping line pockets of others. If you really want to sure that your efforts are going to the correct place visit some of the following links:
http://www.nbcam.org/
http://www.breastcancerfund.org/
http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org/
http://www.cancer.org/
Check them out, see if its somewhere you think you money might go to help those in need.

I understand this is in no way a WoW blog, but it was something I wanted to get out there and say and since pally's are pink....we kind of have a relation....right?

Also a really quick footnote, I am in no way related, nor do I endorse or am I affilated with any of the links in this post, it was something I thought would help get people moving in the right direction.

No More Accents and Other news.

Shame on you accents -

4.3 is up on the PTR and here is one thing that makes some scratch their head, kinda along the lines of removing portals, to put them back up later...

Not sure what to think about this, really. But Blizz in the patch notes stated the following below. I understand that people get frustrated about having to type or look how to make the special code for this, is that really that big a deal when the names that currently have them won't have to change?

North American realms (excluding Brazilian, Latin American, and Oceanic realms) no longer permit letters with accents in character or guild names. Existing character and guild names with special characters will be unaffected by this change. (source)

I xfered to a server where Chasey was taken by a level 11 toon that hadn't been on in months and wasn't on for all the time I was on the server. After multiple attempts to get a GM to open the name, finally I got one to do it for me. The reason: the character didn't meet the criteria to unlock the name. I asked why and it was because the toon was to high a level. All in all it worked out, I got the name. I did however have to pay for this service.

Here is where I have issues with this, if you have a toon and need to xfer, the name is your toons identity, at least it was for me. I understand rolling a new toon, find another name but really....Chasey was always Chasey even if she did have a å in her name.

There are two other issues that I'll hit on briefly and you can make your own mind on this issue but reading this on MMO-Champion, you'd think this was the BEST THING EVER.

• To many people sit on names, not logging in and Blizz wants us to roll alts, you hear lots of complaints that too many names are taken.
• Having one special accent in a name is no harm at all, yet this is a patch note, is this a game changer?

Maybe they plan on opening up surnames?

Bout me...
Not sure where I'm at in game. I'm done with raiding and my computer is still out. I still keep up with the news. I did some looking to see what I wanted my gear to look like when we can change it. BTW anyone else think that "transmogirification" is a weird name?

Here is one idea I came up with:
Found this while doing a search, it has spirit on it but really its just for looks. I have no idea what weapon to go with, but I will go with the Isle's shield. Always loved that thing.

My other options and I have it sitting in the bank is Tier 6. How can you beat Tier 6 as a paladin?

I'll throw a picture up later. Sadly this is the only thing I got to look forward to so far, I'm not a very vanity orientated player but making my toon look good is going to be pretty awesome.

Incoming Nerf and Fixes.

Below is today's big nerf to 4.2 and at the bottom is my response to my comments from my last quote. For some odd reason I can't comment on my own blog...LOL

From MMO-Champion
September 20Firelands

• Hell Hound Rend Flesh damage has been reduced by 25%.
• The damage multiplier granted by energy to Unstable Magma has been reduced by 50%.
• Alysrazor
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Alysrazor now drops 1 additional feather in 10-player mode and 2 additional feathers in 25-player mode in all cycles.
  • The Wings of Flame buff duration on Alysrazor is now uniformly 30 seconds.
  • Alysrazor’s Fiery Tornados now move slower.
• Baleroc
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Baleroc now swings 25% slower while Decimation Blade is active.
  • The duration of Tormented has been reduced on normal difficulty.
• Beth'tilac
  • Beth'tilac's health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Lord Rhyolith
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
• Majordomo Fandral Staghelm
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty. Health and damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Druid of the Flame have had their health reduced by 15%, and Sunfire damage reduced by 25% on both difficulties.
  • The health and melee damage of Spirit of the Flame have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty, and reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
• Ragnaros
  • Ragnaros' health and damage have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty.
  • Ragnaros' damage has been reduced by 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Magma Trap damage has been reduced on all difficulties.
  • The health and damage of additional enemies in this encounter have been reduced by 25% on normal difficulty and 15% on Heroic difficulty.
  • Wrath of Ragnaros now knocks targets up, but not back, on normal difficulty.
• Shannox
  • Health and damage have been reduced by 15% on both normal and Heroic difficulty.
  • Riplimb's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Rageface's health has been reduced by 15%.
  • Magma Flare damage and Hurl Spear damage have been reduced by 15% on both difficulties.

So here it goes:
Nat and Caly thanks for reading. I agree with you both.
@LM I appreciate you responding and reading the blog, I don't think you read this post fully. If you did, maybe you missed some of my points.
When T12 (FL) hit, VP was not available from the T11 instances. They placed a hot fix later to receive VP. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2795074028?page=4#69
That wasn't really an opinion, it was fact that has been updated and exact quote was:

Removing VP from T11 raids when FL hit.

alluding to the fact that it is NOW there. Sorry if that was perceived wrong in my type.
The next issue you addressed is ilvl, I was NOT saying was the highest ilvl in game. I made a mistake, 378 is from normals and 391 is from heroics. I made a horrible mistake and I'm sorry. Point of that whole paragraph is the guilds that have killed Rags on normal is very low.

Lastly is the nerf to FL being in steps, at the time of the post all the info I had was it would be done:

"by around the same percentage we brought difficulty down for the original Cataclysm raids when Rage of the Firelands (patch 4.2) was released."

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/3494581#blog

There was no announcement of steps. It said the coming weeks.

I can see where this would be a huge area of concern for people as I got info wrong, I will make adjustments and fix this in the future. In general I do check my facts even on Op-ed type posts.

I hope I made your day better and cleared up some confusion, cuz that is what I'm here for.

State of Warcraft

It has been a long time since I posted anything of substance. The last few days I've been laid up due to my bad knee being, well...bad again. I've been reading alot about the game, the feeling of the players and doing my blogging rounds.
Here is what I've seen and yes this is my opinion but it is based on what others, at least those who frequent the net have said.
-No one is happy - the game is losing players, guilds and some servers are even on the decline. Reused content and lack of things to do is hurting the game. On top of it releasing a major patch during the summer makes it hard for a lot of the non hard core gamer.
-Raid lockouts- going to a single lockout has hurt the player base far worse than anyone expected. This limits the time and activity of many of WOW's players. You can only raid on your toon one lockout per week. You can't even pug, you only have 1 lockout.
-Raiding is difficult - Blizz did what they set out to do by making the raid much harder than they were in Wrath. You hear the calls to bring back Wrath raiding again. Sadly I think Blizz missed the boat thou in how unforgiving they made T11 and T12 raids. Yes they were doable, but honestly, T11 was MUCH harder than T10 ICC. Its never a good thing to have the end of one Xpac be easier, almost too easy and then make the next tier of a new Xpac so challenging.
14,000 guilds have cleared FL's normal modes, this is equal to 1.4% of WOW's population. Way too low. Average Ilvl is 370, that's pretty high seeing as the item level is 371. This means that everyone who has beat Rags is wearing head to toe gear from FL to kill him.

I understand how the upcoming nerf to FL is upsetting all the hard work they have put in with raids and wipes. Taking 20% health and reducing damage as much is a hard pill to swallow. I don't think Blizz doing the 20% right away, doing it in steps would have made this to take.

Other mistakes Blizz has made with Cataclysm :
- Again reusing content, while for the first few weeks it was cool. It got old again fast.
- Making 5 mans soooo long as Cata was released.
- Tuning 10 mans in T11 so tightly. Yes this argument has been beat to death but 1 bad player and on death was almost a certain wipe.
- Taking the community out of the MMO. Just que up and do dailies.
- No central city. Throwing us into the home cities was just horrible.
- Removing VP from T11 raids when FL hit. Even a reduced rate would have been nice.
- 31 point talent tree - everyone is cookie cutter. You can't even be bad by picking the wrong talents, you don't have any to pick wrong.

With all this it seems to me, Blizz has thrown the panic switch and is now allowing us gear up prior to Deathwing hitting the net.

Farewll to a few

This is sort of an odd post but seeing as I don't play a whole lot at the moment and don't have in game news or insight to what is really going on. I wanted to take a minute to say good bye to a guild I don't really know but that has been a major source of entrainment and laughs in my playing of this game.

In fact, I was in a guild and had a pretty good in game friend that used one of Sebudai's quotes every raid. I no longer talk to that guy but any time I see the below picture or anything that resembles one of these quotes, he pops to mind. So I guess this post has a tad of duality to it. Goodbye to Juggernaut and Skreebo.

The reason I write about this is, Juggernaut of Mal' Ganis was a top 5 guild in the world at one point. The recently stopped raiding, recruiting and to the best of my knowledge lost most of their members. I've sent an in game mail to Sebudai to see what happened but I got no response. I know guilds come and go, but this leaves me wondering how many long time, vanilla guilds have split apart during Cataclysm and the lack of content?

I think my very favorite one is:

It's not rocket surgery

but I still giggle like a school girl every time I read:

As a guild we struggle with these mobility fights, I'm not sure why we do.If you need practice jumping then you can go find a cliff and jump off it or something. 

In other happenings:

4.2.2 seems to be flying upon us meaning 4.3 is close. It seems this Xpcac has gone by very fast.  I'm pretty interested in the extra bank storage but I don't like that you lose all the gems and enchants. And you can bet your bottom dollar I will be rocking the T6 look all the time! and my hunter will be in T4. I'm pretty excited for these changes.

Thank you to those who congratulated me for my one year as a blogger. For some reason I can not sign in to respond to posts. Odd!

I'd also like to say goodbye to the guy who invited me into the guild. He was my tanking partner and a very knowledgeable guy. I've tanked with some good tanks, knowledgeable people and people who care about the guild. But Life had the best grasp of three at the same time. He always did his home work, had his gear perfect and without being an officer he ran just about everything within the guild and didn't complain. He had to for personal reasons leave the game for an undetermined amount of time. I'm sad to seem him go, with him went his RL friends which wasn't a shock but it took a pretty geared healer and a fill in raider.

Life take care buddy.

To my readers, I will try and post up some more stuff soon. This summer has been SOOOO busy?

DK Solo's LK!!!

This is a solid video about a DK soloing a end tier boss. I'd say the pinnacle of Wrath raiding but Ulduar and Yogg would have something very loud to say about that.

Take a look and enjoy the video. The DK that did this is in 391 gear and is a master at soloing bosses.

Overall nice work and I'm truly envious...well done!



LK's main challenges are:

• 1) Practice of cooldown usage in p1. They're used *very* strictly and if you don't have that practice, you'll probably wipe in p1 endlessly (which is what I initially did)
• 2) surviving transition phases. This is insane and requires, again, extremely precise cooldown management and positioning.
• 3) Finally, the obvious DPS race. This fight lasted an exact 15 minutes, not a single second more or less - I spent the whole evening wiping between 11 and 12% and finally, finally did it, through more Vengeance stacking and better play on my part (oh .. and maybe a lil bit crit RNG I guess? :p).

FAQ:

• Necrotic Plague : cannot target the tank. You need it to clear the ghouls/vrykuls from phase 1, however. The trick is to put an engineer dummy to drop aggro for a split second, LK gives you the plague, outheal it, then proceed. Use either AMS/Chains of Ice or Potion of Purification to remove it/prevent it from affecting you again.
• Valks : Buggy as hell. Can't target the tank, they just mess around. They finally stop eating popcorn and grab me at some point... you'll have to watch to see when.
• Defile : I stand in some of these on purpose in order to increase Vengeance. It has to be done very carefully, since both p2 and p3 are very healing intensive phases (p2 because of Infest which means I can't dip too low on health, p3 because of vile spirit explosions)
• Frostmourne: Yet another mechanic that doesn't target the tank. Wouldn't be difficult to overcome in any way whatsoever, but would make beating the enrage impossible, so I guess that's a good thing it's not there.

Source and source

Nice work!

One YEAR!

Yesterday was the blogs 1st birthday. Its been a bumpy and eventful year. Life has been just tremendously hectic and I am sorry I haven't been updating or posting alot lately. Soon that will change.

This Blog has taken me to a different realm, watched me FINALLY kill the LK after 5 months of trying, watched at least 4 guilds fall apart, seen a computer go bye bye, countless people I was close with stop playing and a new xpac come out. All it all in game life has been almost as eventful for my toons as for me in real life.

I'd like to take a minute to thank:

My guild - a good group of people, I ejoy playing with these guys it makes raiding fun.

Bloggers: Goodbye to some of the greats we have seen go. Wrathy, Honor, tanking tips and Tegen, you guys kicked off my need to write about something I am at times very passionate about.
The new blogs who continue to explode on the scene with great ideas and a wealth of info.
And lets not forget the writers who still inspire me daily - Rhidach, Argus, the Bossy Pally and Manalious. Oh and then there is the trio at sacred duty who fill all of us with the knowledge to be better, make us strive to be great and make sure our shit is gemmed, spec'd and enchanted the right way. If there was anyone I missed or forgot...I'm sorry. The blogging community as a whole is almost as amazing as my great guild.

And...to my family for allowing me this hobby and giving me the time to play a game.
Thanks to all that have read my blog. I really like to write, I'm not great at it but this gives me a chance to allow my voice to matter a bit more. I'll be back posting info and babble soon.

Here's to another year....hopefully a great year!

Fireland Raid guide and videos

I got most of my info from here along with the boss guides they have a great trash guide too.

Thrash info:
http://www.icy-veins.com/firelands-trash-guide it breaks it down pack by pack per boss.


Map of the instance:





Boss videos: All of a Tank POV. I hope you enjoy! Thanks again to Icy Veins !

Shannox written guide and video -



Lord Rhyolith written guide-


Beth'tilac written guide -


Baleroc written guide -


Alysrazor written guide -


Majordomo Staghelm written guide -


Ragnaros written guide -