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 -

Bout time!

Allow me to show praise and get the word out that its about time Blizz recognized this person. He is a good guy, does tons for the community and lets face it, some of us tanks would be lost without his "thing" he does.

The only thing missing is a cool lil tag at the bottom stating his moniker he has been given on Maintankadin which he is "bringer of pounding headaches" but luckily he is brilliant enough to put a TL; DR in each section to allow the "rest of us" to understand all that crazy math. Thank you Theck, for always giving us your best, the Paladin community would be far behind without you and you have always taken time to answer my questions with class! People like you make this game better.
[Theck's Emberseal]

My Absence -

While all the blogs are talking about the new HS mechanic and the changes in the spec, I'm sidelined with an ailing computer and a bruised ego, only slightly thou. My guild is raiding without me and while the get their feet wet I'm stuck listening on vent on my laptop. I'd love to be there dying with them, killing trash and planning strats. I'm a few weeks from being back operational so not only will I be behind in gear but I'll be the new tank again. I'm grateful that I'm in a causal guild at times like these. While I haven't been on alot with my computer being down, I'm not in raider status right now so I have the cold shoulder turned to me, ever so slightly. Time will tell.

The Contract

Are you really wearing that?
Now, we have all run across these people, we seen them in PUGs or the LFD system. The clueless, the misinformed, the lazy. Some of us take pride in our toons, as much pride as we would in ourselves, I mean why wouldn't you? We spend hours playing the toon, putting our personality on a pixel. Don't we? Every time we step into a 5 man LFD or PUG raid, people look at our gear, choices and spec to make judgements about us. Rightfully so, this toon we play tells alot about us and its all our mates playing with us know.

The inspection -
When we enter LFD people are inspecting you. Looking to see if you are a good player. Who are they to judge on how we play by the loot we have, gems we use of enchant we put on? In essence there is an accepted way to play this game. If you gear isn't right, the reforging is bad or you say wear spirit on a DK, this is the only know way we have to tell if they can find their as with both their hands. This would be no different than going to a job interview in coveralls or try to put out a house fire with polyester pants on. Neither one is going to make you very successful.

D-Bags and gear snobs aside, when we enter the LFD or a PUG we in a way enter into a social contract that states we know how to play, and we won't be an anchor to the system. Far to often people who que don't hold up to their end of the contract. The ill's of the LFD aren't part of this post, I don't think I have enough room or time to get into that.

The Clueless -
Probably the easiest to help of the offenders. A simple tell stating where to look for help or a nudge that mastery might be better than crit and they are on their way to being a better player. Often times these are people that are newer to the game or have a very controlling class lead in the guild. There is a fine line between the clueless and the misinformed.

The Misinformed -
This is the player that will snap at you if you try to help or ask "why did you chose X over Y"? This is the person who "knows it all" yet still does it wrong. For the most part in my book these are the worst players. They do it wrong. They do it bad and won't take advice. Its clear where ever they get their info it holds them back. I'm not condoning have an EPEEN discussion in a pug but if they are doing it wrong and you think you can help, give it a shot. This is in general the play that will disrupt the group and let everyone know just how much they know, even thou they do just about everything wrong.

The Lazy -
This is the one that drives everyone nuts. They don't even care to gem, let alone bother getting hit capped. This is usually an alt, farmer or part time player. These are the people who will wear the PVP trinket and brag about the ilvl they have. This is an unsat toon. Its far worse than the clueless, they don't know any better, the lazy just won't do it. They feel they can get carried and of the above two mentioned this is the biggest reason groups argue or are dysfunctional. They don't pull their weight and don't care.

Every time we enter the LFD or pug we will not be at our best. Not everyone who plays this game is PRO or 'leet. But I think you at least need to have an idea of how to play your class and gear/gem/enchant them. You have 4 other people who are with you counting on you to do your job. This is that social contract you sign up for by que'n. No one is asking for all epics or BiS to do your daily but at least don't step into something you cheated the system on by buying PVP gear off the AH or throwing you healy spec'd trinket in to DPS a pug.

TL; DR
We owe it to try hard and gear correctly. There is no excuse for doing a run with others and expecting that they carry you or cover for your ineptness in spec/gear choices. As in society we owe it to uphold the contract of the norm while playing with others. Expect a vote kick or heckling if you are Lazy, Misinformed or Clueless.

Top 100!

Kind of a BIG deal!

The duality of this post is crazy! This my friends, this is my 100th post and I also wanted to brag a tad about something I set out to do.

Goals are different for everyone in this game. This was the kind of goal that you can work at and not hope for, like say...a piece of loot dropping from a boss. I'm not sure why I wanted to try and get ranked, maybe boredom, but I wanted to try this.

I did some looking and seen what kind of DPS I needed to pull and I was very...very close already. I put in a hit trinket, switched a glyph and added some expertise. There is no secret on what we need to do for damage output. At one point I was at 14.8K DPS but things got a tad hectic at the end and I needed to pop CD's.

A few things I noticed while doing this fight in a pure pure selfish way, when it comes to ONLY worrying about numbers.things seemed off and  I didn't like tanking this way, hell I didn't even like the feeling after the kill was complete. I won't lie, I'm slightly happy I accomplished my goal but I felt selfish. Here is what I noticed; My health meter was low ALOT! I became much more tunnel visioned, I only knew what I was doing and didn't have a firm grasp of the raids position. I never worried about WoG on anyone and my CD usage was delayed to say the least, it wasn't proactive. Would I do this again? Probably not, it wasn't fulfilling, that's just my opinion. (Source)

Personal -

Life has been crazy and hectic and I don't want it any other way. I'm helping coach my kids softball team and my son is playing T-ball for the first time. The sun is out and I think....SUMMER is finally here. These days and times make me me happy I'm in a casual yet competent guild.
If posting is erratic and a tad small on the content side, hang in there with me. The rest of my world is getting my attention.